Line To Nowhere

MRJ 209

2011-09-15T21:37:00.001+01:00

Well, how about that... you wait 8 months for a blog post to come along and then two turn up together! And this one after I had effectively announced my temporary withdrawal from the hobby yesterday!

Anyway, my wife kindly picked up the latest issue of MRJ for me while out shopping so I've spent a pleasant couple of hours this evening perusing its contents.

In my usual non-conformist style, the thing that grabbed me the most in the whole magazine is the full page advertisement for Gordon Gravett's new book (published by Wild Swan - who else?) called 'Modelling Trees - Part 1: Broadleaf Trees'. The cover picture, reproduced in the ad, is just breathtaking (at least if, like me, you're as bothered about the realism of things like trees as you are with crossing vees and coupling rods!). Naturally it's gone straight on my Christmas list.

Talking of Christmas lists, and somewhat off the subject... I've been considering investing in one of those Noch Grasmaster static grass applicators. I know they're ridiculously expensive for what they are and I know I said I wasn't going to be doing any modelling, but part of me still hankers after being able to play around with the odd little scenic cameo piece - you know, just a few square inches, a bit of grass, a tree...

But that reminds me... I'd better get on and update the MRJ Index with this new issue...

Taking stock

2011-09-14T14:27:00.002+01:00

I realise it's been many months since I last posted here, and even more since I wrote anything directly modelling-related. The short version of the story is that I've realised I just don't have the time (I've only found the time to write this because I'm off work sick!) or space for modelling at this point in my life and so the project I had been working on bit by bit over the past few years has been shelved - or more accurately, put in the loft - for the foreseeable future.

But what has led me to this decision? And how is it that others seem to manage to juggle the demands of daily life and the constraints of time, space and money with a successful sideline in modelling, while it has proved so difficult for me? I can't fully answer that other than through the old cliche that 'everyone is different'. Personally, while I could in theory make time for modelling, it's either time that I know should be spent doing other, more important things, or time that I'd rather spend doing other, equally non-important things!

My weekends generally tend to fill up with family activities and jobs around the house and garden. And on weeknights, once our 3-year-old is finally in bed and asleep, the only thing I'm good for is crashing in front of the TV for an hour or so until my eyes are too heavy to keep open!

Another problem is that I can't just 'dip in' to a bit of modelling when I have a few spare minutes, because there's nowhere that I can leave things permanently set up. With a 3-year old roaming the house, you just can't leave bottles of thinners, flux, soldering irons, paint, super glue, scalpels, etc lying around on a table - unless maybe you're fortunate enough to have a dedicated room you can lock up between shifts - which we don't! And coupled with that, I'm excessively tidy - so the mere thought of having a great pile of bits and pieces just 'left out' somewhere bothers me too much, especially when the only possible bit of space doubles as an office, computer room, library and walk-in wardrobe!

The result is that an hour of modelling often requires the best part of an hour just to get everything out, set up and ready, and clean up and tidy away afterwards. And that's time I've just not got.

Coupled with these practical considerations, I do think that my decision to 'go P4' probably didn't help things in the first place. Even if you don't factor in the additional time and effort required to re-wheel RTR locomotives and stock, the overall ethos of trying to get everything as close to perfect as possible ('getting it all right'), while appealing to a perfectionist like me, also has tended to put the brakes on any kind of 'just get on with it' kind of approach that, while it carries with it the risk of failure, is much more likely to lead to some kind of end result than the kind of endless faffing about that has been the name of the game for me!

I'm not knocking P4 or suggesting that others shouldn't go down that route - just that it probably hasn't helped in my case! I'm not the sort of person who can just whack in some replacement wheels and leave it at that - frames have to be widened, brake hangers have to line up properly... the very things that 'getting it all right' is all about really. And as I found with the Bachmann 45xx, what might have seemed like a relatively straightforward task of replacing the wheels ended up becoming a long and tedious process that never got finished.

I look at the models of Chris Nevard and others who have stuck to 00 gauge and embraced the compromises, and realise that once you accept that there will be a few details that don't quite measure up to the real thing, you can still achieve something that looks and works remarkably well. In fact, if I could build something that looked half as good as some of Chris's creations, I'd be more than happy! That said, I don't see switching back to 00 at this point is going to really help with the other, more pressing issues.

So for now I'm just embracing the title of 'Armchair Modeller' and getting on with life! Even if I don't post on here very often for the foreseeable future, this blog will remain up and running. Hopefully at some point I'll find I'm able to pick up the modelling again and continue the story.

MRJ Index for mobile web browsers

2011-03-05T17:29:00.001Z

I've been making a few tweaks to www.modelrailwayjournal.com for those of you who may be viewing the site in a mobile browser (these days if you have a reasonably modern phone its often easier to use it for quick web searches than a desktop computer - that's certainly my experience anyway).

While the website was already perfectly usable on a mobile phone, it should now 'fit' the smaller screen size a lot better.

The mobile layout is triggered automatically based on screen size so if you've got a particularly hi-res phone display you may still see the desktop version. The functionality is identical either way.

I've only tested this on my own phone (a HTC Desire) so if you notice any major problems on your particular device/browser let me know.

UPDATE: I just noticed that it reverts to the desktop layout if I use my phone in landscape mode, so I need to sort this out when I get the chance.

This is what £500 worth of railway books looks like...

2011-01-15T22:01:00.001Z

I picked up this car-load of second hand railway books from Nene Valley Railway Books today. Incredibly, I got this lot for £50 thanks to a 90% off sale! Amazing!

There are a handful that I may sell on, but there are some real gems in there, including some quite rare old OPC books.

Here's the complete list (I haven't got round to adding then to my books page yet):

- Adley, Robert - 'The Call of Steam'
- Adley, Robert - 'In Search of Steam, 1962-1968'
- Allen, Dr. Ian - 'Gleneagles to Glastonbury, steam in the thirties'
- Atthill, Robin - 'The Picture History of The Somerset & Dorset Railway'
- Awdry, Christopher - 'Encyclopedia of British Railway Companies'
- Blenkinsop, Richard James - 'Silhouettes of the Great Western'
- Blenkinsop, Richard James - 'Shadows of the Great Western'
- Blenkinsop, Richard James - 'Big Four Cameraman'
- Bradley, Rodger, P. - 'GWR Two Cylinder 4-6-0's and 2-6-0's'
- Casserley, Henry Cyril - 'Steam Locomotives of British Railways'
- Christiansen, Rex - 'Cambrian Lines'
- Dalton, T. P. - 'Cambrian Companionship'
- Dart, Maurice - 'The Last Days of Steam in Plymouth and Cornwall'
- Esau, Mike (compiler) - 'John Ashman FRPS Rail Portfolio'
- Esau, Mike (editor) - 'The Nostalgia of Steam - Classic Steam Images by John Specner Gilks'
- Forsythe, H.G. - 'The Railway Vanishes - An Appreciation of a Lost Era'
- Gammell, Christopher J. - 'Around the Branch Lines, No. 2, Great Western'
- Gasson, Harold - 'Firing Days, Reminiscences of a Great Western Fireman'
- Gasson, Harold - 'Footplate Days, More Reminiscences of a Great Western Fireman'
- Herbert, Ron - 'The Working Railway - A Railwayman's Photographs 1960-67'
- Kneale, E.N. - 'North Wales Steam (1927-1968)'
- Lingard, Richard - 'The Woodstock Branch'
- Montgomery, S.J. and Nicholas, D. (compilers) - '100 Years of The Great Western'
- Morrison, G.W. and Whiteley, J.S. - 'The Big Four Remembered'
- Nixon, Les - 'Classic Steam - An evocation of the twighlight years of the steam Age'
- Nock, O.S. - 'The GWR Mixed Traffic 4-6-0 Classes'
- Nock, O.S. - 'Great Locomotives of the GWR'
- Nock, O.S. - 'The British Steam Railway Locomotive 1925-1965'
- Nock, O.S. - 'From the Footplate, Reminiscences of the last years of Steam'
- Nock, O.S. - 'British Locomotives of the 20th Century, Volume 2 1930-1960'
- Nock, O.S. - 'British Locomotives of the 20th Century, Volume 3 1960-the present Day'
- Nock, O.S. - 'British Locomotives of the 20th Century, Volume 1 1900-1930'
- Parkhouse, Neil & Pope, Ian - 'Edwardian Dean in Colour, Volume 1'
- Paye, Peter - 'The Stoke Ferry Branch'
- Paye, Peter - 'The Saffron Walden Branch'
- Paye, Peter - 'The Bishop's Stortford, Dunmow & Braintree Branch'
- Peters, Ivo - 'The Somerset & Dorset in the Fifties, Volume 1, 1950 -1954'
- Peters, Ivo - 'The Somerset & Dorset in the Fifties, Volume 2, 1955 -1959'
- Pollins, Harold - 'Britain's Railways - An Industrial History'
- Semmens, Peter W.B. - 'History of the Great Western Railway. volume 1 Consolidation 1923-1929'
- Semmens, Peter W.B. - 'History of the Great Western Railway. volume 3 Wartime and the Final Years 1939 -1948'
- Semmens, Peter W.B. - 'History of the Great Western Railway. volume 2 The Thirties 1930 -1939'
- Siviter, Roger - 'Rhythms of Steam - Images of the Steam Age Railway'
- Smart, John (editor) - 'Branch Line Memories'
- Vaughan, Adrian - 'BR (WR) Signalling'
- Vaughan, Adrian - 'Great Western Portrait 1913-1921'
- Whitehurst, Brian - 'Great Western Engines, Names, Numbers, Types and Classes, (1940 to Preservation)'
- Various - 'The Train Now Departing - Personal Memories of the Last Days of Steam'

I just need to find somewhere to put them all now (and find time to read them!).

2010-12-30T17:28:00.001Z

Ends and backdrop temporarily positioned in place.

Despite its size, the layout is going to weigh an absolute ton when its complete! I really should have made the baseboard lighter, but there we go! Perhaps I'll keep the backdrop detachable rather than permanently fixing it in place. Mind you, I don't intend to attach it until at least all the under-baseboard work is complete.

Mobile-friendly version

2010-12-29T12:11:00.001Z

I've just activated the mobile-friendly version of this site for readers viewing it on a mobile device. It doesn't appear to be customisable as yet (or if it is I've not figured out how to yet) but it does make the site much easier to use on a small screen.

Christmas woodworking

2010-12-29T10:29:00.000Z

While I pluck up the courage to install the electrics and turnout mechanisms I decided that a less daunting but equally necessary job was fitting the backdrop and fascia.

I prefer the all-in-one, wraparound style of backdrop with no visible joins or corners, but not wanting to sacrifice any of the already limited space I opted for the more conventional approach of separate, flat back and sides instead. The joins will be hidden using bathroom sealant before painting and the corners disguised with trees (the back of the layout will pretty much be lined with trees anyway). The backrop will simply be painted to represent a clear blue sky.

A fascia board will be fitted above the front of the layout which will eventually carry the layout's name (whatever that may end up being!) and hide/support the lighting - a 3' long lightweight 30W fluorescent strip light. This will be detachable to allow easier access while working on the layout.

The backdrop is made from standard 3mm hardboard, pinned and glued to a framework of lightweight stripwood batons, and will be screwed and glued to the edges of the baseboard frame.

I'm in the middle of preparing the various sections ready for fitting to the layout, so will post some photos when I've made a bit more progress.

Electronics was never a strong point...

2010-12-18T22:32:00.001Z

I figured I should roughly draw out the track sections and what will be wired to what on the underside of the baseboard. Trouble is, even with a simple track plan like this I'm struggling to figure it out - but I'll get there eventually!

I've cut some copper-clad circuit board into strips, which I'll glue to the underside of the baseboard where the dropper wires protrude, so they can be soldered to it. This should increase strength as well as providing a connector point for the wiring.

(Oh, and don't worry - I glued some pieces of cork onto the corners of the baseboard surface so I could turn it over without damaging the trackwork!)

2010-12-04T15:07:00.001Z

My plan to introduce some variation into the track levels has fallen at the first hurdle! Although I managed to cut through the baseboard relatively easily using a jig-saw, it is still fixed absolutely rock solid to the frame underneath.

I tried using a cutting disc in the mini-drill to separate the baseboard from the frame members, but the disc broke almost immediately, sending shrapnel flying everywhere, so in the interests of safety I quickly gave up on that idea!

Saws and chisels are out of the question as there's limited space to work in anyway, plus there are dropper wires sticking through the underside of the baseboard everywhere so I need to avoid knocking them and breaking the soldered rail connections!

So unless anyone has any bright ideas, I think I'm going to have to give up on the idea and live with a flat baseboard. (I may still be able to have a gradient on the rear running line by just lifting the track itself and adding a sub-base on to of the baseboard surface - at last this would avoid the same problems, although of course out could being its own set of problems!

Oh the joy of backward planning!!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Thinking vertically

2010-11-23T21:56:00.047Z

...well, maybe just slightly less horizontally!

Seeing 'Hadley Road' at the Warley exhibition reminded me of something that has been simmering away at the back of my mind for some time - the desire to get away from the 'flat baseboard syndrome' and introduce some subtle gradients and differences in elevation into my model. (By the way, I really should come up with a proper name for it, but that's another blog post!)

The Forest of Dean railways were notorious for their gradients. At many locations, due to the hilly terrain and inconvenient location of the collieries and other industrial workings, sidings and branches had to rise steeply or drop sharply away from the running lines, which themselves often had very taxing gradients (1:30 on the Coleford branch for example).

Given that I made the baseboard that I'm using well before coming up with the final track plan - and the track plan itself came well before any finalising of the layout as a whole (yes, completely and utterly the wrong way round to do things!), I've ended up with a track formation that is absolutely flat. Now obviously this could be compensated for to some extent by the surrounding landscape (in the limited space available), but how much better to actually introduce some variation in the track levels and gradients if possible....

Until now I assumed it was water under the bridge. But after seeing Hadley Road I came back and took a fresh look at things, and I think there could be a solution. Not the most conventional solution, by any means, and possibly not the sort of thing anyone would recommend.. but a possible solution nonetheless!

Ideally I'd like the main running line at the back of the layout to have quite a steep rising gradient right to left starting just after the turnout, so that at the leftmost side of the layout it's a scale 5 or 6 feet above the adjacent running line. This would work out to about a 1:30 gradient.

Then I'd like the sidings leading into the screens at the front to drop down slightly from right to left so that where they enter the screens at the left hand side the track level is a scale 3 feet or so lower than the running line that leads around behind the screens to the empty wagon sidings.

There are several issues to be addressed if I go ahead with this:

1) How to cut the sections out?
2) How to reposition them at the new heights/gradients.
3) How to ensure a gradual transition between level and gradients.

It would be ideal if there were some way of easily separating the cork underlay + track formation from the baseboard itself. However, given that it was stuck down with wood glue, I doubt very much this is a feasible option.

I think the only realistic option is to cut them out as entire sections - baseboard + underlay + track - using a jig-saw.

However, there is a potential problem here - the baseboard surface is screwed to the underframe at various points, not hidden by the cork underlay! Fortunately I have a few photos of the baseboards taken before the undelay was added, so I should be able to guesstimate their position, locate them and unscrew them where surface sections are to be removed - so long as the screws don't lie immediately beneath a rail. A couple of timbers can easily be removed temporarily, but I don't want to start taking up whole sections of track!

Anyway, assuming this doesn't present too much of a problem, repositioning and re-fixing the cut-out sections should be fairly straightforward. I also don't foresee any problems with the overall strength of the baseboard once the pieces are cut out as the underframe will be left intact (I suppose there is a possibility if it proves impossible to access the screws that I could cut through the underframe sections as well, then add in new bracing pieces etc but that all seems like a bit too much effort for what is at the end of the day a fairly minor enhancement to the overall design of the layout!)

Aside from this, the only real question mark hangs over how to make a gradual transition between the level and gradient. (This would be essential on the rear running line, although could potentially be avoided on the front sidings as they could be set on a continuous, even gradient along the whole length of the layout - or alternatively set on the level but at a slightly lower level than the other tracks.) Given that the baseboards are 8mm MDF unfortunately I don't think they'll bend sufficiently without some extra work. The only thing I can think of is to carefully make a series of lateral cuts through the MDF - without cutting through the underlay or trackwork, along the length of the transition gradient. It would need some sort of jig to hold the sections upside-down without damaging the track and, presumably, use of a cutting disc to avoid cutting through the underlay and track too!

As I said, this is all a bit unconventional, but do-able I think. It might seem like a lot of effort for a potentially minor thing, but on a layout of this size every little detail helps, and I do think that it would be a worthwhile effort.

National Men In Anoraks Convention

2010-11-21T22:25:00.001Z

I made the annual pilgrimage to the Warley Exhibition at the NEC today. I don't visit many model railway exhibitions but being only an hour's drive from the NEC, and it being the biggest show of the year, its a shame not to really - and it was well worth it (although my feet ache now from walking round all day!)

I'm sure others will do a more thorough job of writing up the event, and if you were there then you'll have your own favourites, but here's a brief run-down of what caught my eye - in no particular order. (I'm afraid I only had my mobile phone with me so my photos weren't high enough quality to post on here really.)

Hadley Road
A nice 0 gauge depiction of a fictional location on the GWR Forest of Dean branch, which captures the location very well with its heavily wooded backdrop, steep branch line gradient and characteristic station buildings. The corrugated-iron-clad coal screens are very similar to the sort of thing I envisage having on my layout, although mine will be modelled end-on.

De Hezelpoort 1927
One word: jaw-dropping! It has 4mm figures RIDING BICYCLES along the street for goodness sake!!! The way the trains disappear off either end of the diorama without the aid of fiddle yards or cassettes is truly ingenious.

The Mumby Lumber Company
Extremely high standard of detail and realism in the buildings and scenics. The interiors of the sawmill and workshop are simply outstanding.

Rymenzburger Chnollebahn
Without a shadow of doubt this was the best-in-show for me. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but to me it's as close to perfection as you can get. I don't think I've ever seen such incredible REALISM and DETAIL. I just love the idiosyncratic agricultural prototype, little petrol engined 'locomotive', run-down, neglected atmosphere, digital sound, and... did I mention the DETAIL?! I just can't even begin to imagine how you go about achieving such realism in a model, even at this scale.

Ynysarwed Sidings
I must admit I was a bit indifferent towards this layout when it was featured in MRJ not so long ago, but 'in the flesh' it made quite an impact and is one of the best 2mm layouts I've seen.

Bridport Town
A very high standard of modelling. In a way, a little on the 'clean/neat' side for me, but still there was something about it that caught my eye. I particularly liked the way the exchange sidings and end of the main line platform are modelled at the front of the layout as a static feature - it shows a bit of out-of-the-box thinking, adding a significant dimension to the layout as a whole, despite only taking up a minimum of space.

Penlan
The scenery on this layout is very effective and realistic for what is a reasonably large layout. The overall effect is extremely convincing, cohesive and realistic.

Pattingham
Although not one of my 'top' layouts of the day, this one just caught my eye because it drew my attention to the sheer amount of 0 gauge you can fit in such a small space, without it feeling unnecessarily cramped.

Gas Works
Another 7mm scale layout. I love the way the buildings really do tower over the railway and dominate the whole layout - extremely effective.

Ellis Road
And yet more 7mm...! (Does anyone else get the feeling I'm modelling in the wrong scale?!) Another interesting and very nicely detailed 'shunting plank'. I thought I'd seen this in MRJ but a quick check on my modelrailwayjournal.com website seems to suggest otherwise.

Gas station diorama by Kathy Millat
I don't know much about this except that I almost missed it as it was just sitting in a glass case on a table with some other stuff. I wish it had been a bit better displayed as the level of detail looked absolutely incredible. No railway, but for sheer realism it looked amazing. Does anyone know anything more about this?

Well, there you go. Honourable mention should perhaps go to Copenhagen Fields - just for the sheer impact it makes when you see such a vast 2mm scale model. There were too many people and too much to really take it in, but it certainly elicited a 'wow' when I saw it! Also, Barmouth Bridge - the backscene really makes this one. And Wansbeck Road which is looking good with its recent extension.

I left with a bag full of bits and pieces from Squires Tools, a few more back issues of Great Western Railway Journal to add to my slowly growing collection, and a copy of Wild Swan's brand new book "The Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway" (which will be put away till Christmas!).

Lego TOUs

2010-11-20T20:17:00.000Z

So, in true Lego style, here's a step by step guide to making your own Lego turnout operating unit!

First, here's the completed unit - slightly modified since the previous photo to make it a little more compact, and to reduce the length of 'throw'.

Here are all the pieces that are required for each unit. I cheated slightly by cutting the 8x2 flat strip into 3 pieces using a razor saw but there are 'real' pieces made to these sizes. The colours obviously are down to personal taste! In addition to the Lego you need a length of hollow brass tubing (mine is about 2.5mm dia with a 1mm dia central bore (the length depends on the thickness of your baseboard - it needs to be long enough to extend up to just below track level, in my case about 4cm).

1. Using a round needle file, file notches in adjacent faces of the 12x1 pieces so that when placed together they provide a tight fit for the brass tube.

2. Insert a connecting 'pin' into either end of one of the strips.

3. Clip the two strips together.

4. Insert 4 pins into the outer faces of the strips as below. These act as stoppers limiting the 'throw' of the unit.

5. Add reinforcing pieces to the underside at either end.

6. Add reinforcing pieces on top.

7. File the tops off the two 2x1 pieces.

8. Clip the 2x1 pieces to the protruding pins at one end. These reduce the throw of the unit slightly more (may need removing once everything is hooked up depending how much 'give' there is in the whole assembly.

9. Insert the brass tube. The exact height can be adjusted once the unit has been installed, and the rod fixed in place.

10. Drill guide holes for screws in the four corners of the baseplate.

11. File the tops of the centre two strips of the 4x4 piece (the exact amount will be determined by the ease with which the moving bar slides back and forth once the unit is fully assembled - it doesn't want to be too loose or too tight).

12. Add te 6x1 pieces on either side of the 4x4 piece.

13. Add the 6x1 flat pieces on top of these.

14. Insert the sliding bar.

15. Complete the unit with the 6x4 piece on top.

Here's a close-up of the slot drilled through the baseboard adjacent to the tiebar. The brass rod attached to the TOU will project up through this hole to surface level.

And the hole drilled in the front of the layout from which the operating bar will protrude. Once everything is in place this will be covered over and disguised by point levers/cranks etc.

Next job - fit the TOUs to the underside of the baseboard. Then install the operating rods (still need to think up a locking mechanism and figure out how polarity switching will be managed). Finally, install the tiebars and surface level operating rods which will locate into the top of the brass rod.

2010-11-19T09:16:00.001Z

Cutting and filing away cork underlay around the turnouts ready for the tiebars and point rodding. A messy job! If I'd used scale thickness timbers this wouldn't be necessary.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

2010-11-14T20:18:00.001Z

(Apologies for the photo quality and childish labels... taken and edited with my phone just now!)

This is the result of 5 minutes rummaging around in the parents garage and a couple of minutes rooting around the Lego box for the right bits...

The blue baseplate will be screwed to the underside of the baseboard (the opposite way up from in the picture). The brass tube that will project up through the baseboard will be inserted vertically through the holes in the sliding bar and be securely fixed in place with epoxy, and the operating rod/wire attached through the horizontal hole at the end.

Simples! I made 3 of these in about 5 minutes. They're surprisingly robust. I don't even think the Lego blocks need glueing together. The sliding bars just require a bit of light filing across the top/bottom so they're not too stiff.

I find the incongruity of a P4 layout with Lego turnout operating units rather amusing!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

2010-11-13T22:38:00.001Z

You know what? My comment about Lego may not have been such a silly suggestion after all! Watch this space...

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Turnout operation

2010-11-12T22:46:00.000Z

Well well well, there's life on this blog after all! Sorry for the absence of anything at all on here for the last few months folks, but basically nothing much has happened in that time!

However, I decided I really needed to just get on and do something - anything! I must confess to having a brief moment or two recently when I wondered if I should just jack in the whole P4 malarkey on the basis that it was to blame for my lack of progress, but I soon saw sense and realised that actually it's got nothing to do with the gauge or scale I happen to have chosen and a lot to do with the realities of daily life, coupled with a general tendency to get sidetracked into other things for months on end!

Anyway, the two key areas that have been holding things up for goodness knows how long are: getting the turnouts operational, and getting my first P4-converted loco up and running. Both are less than straightforward, although this has been due in large part to a kind of rabbit-in-the-headlights instinct - it all seems t0o overwhelming so I'll just stand here rooted to the spot and do nothing...!

The best course of action in these situations is to break things down into manageable chunks. So I decided I should start with the turnouts. They're built, and the Masokits tiebars are ready to install, but that's as far as I'd got. 1) I'm concerned that when I try to solder the tiebars to the switch blades I'll end up de-soldering the tiebars themselves and undoing all the hours of work I put in assembling them in the first place! 2) I really don't know how I'm going to operate them.

OK, so the soldering business is just one of those things where I think you have to give it a go and hope for the best, and if the worst does happen then you just have to bite the bullet and backtrack a bit. Living and learning and all that!

But on the operational side of things, some careful thought and planning was needed. I've spent hours in the past reading up on various different solutions for turnout operation, but none of it has ever quite fallen into place for me. What I need is a solution that is simple, low-tech, idiot-proof, and that I can put together using the most basic and readily available 'ingredients' possible.

So, having a day off work, I popped down to B&Q to see what bits and pieces I could collect together. Perhaps this was the wrong way round to be doing things, but, as I say, sometimes you just have to get out there and do something, even if it is in the wrong order! (Actually, I did spend most of yesterday evening reading various posts on the Scalefour Society forum and RMWeb about turnout operation which planted a few new ideas and revived a few old ones.)

Anyway, to cut a long story short, after a half hour or so browsing the aisles at B&Q, and a few pounds spent on random bits and pieces which may or may not come in useful, and then an hour or so sat with pen and paper musing over various ideas, I have come up with a plan. Well, half a plan anyway!

Here it is!

I'm not expecting you to be able to figure out what it is just by looking at that load of scribbles though, so I'll try to explain roughly what I have come up with so far.

I had already decided that I'd follow the recommendation that comes with the Masokits tiebars and attach 0.5mm wire that will run out under the stock rail. This will terminate in a 90 degree bend and a couple of millimetres of wire locating downwards into the top end of a piece of brass tube projecting through a slot in the baseboard up to surface level. The bit I hadn't figured out before was what the tube would be attached to underneath or how it would be moved! However, the theory at least is that the turnout/tiebar/wire assembly above the baseboard will be a separate unit from whatever is underneath the baseboard (including the vertical tube), hopefully making life a little easier when it comes to assembling everything (and potentially, disassembling it if that should ever be necessary in the future) as they can be dealt with completely seperately.

For better or worse, I had already ruled out electrical point operation, or memory wire, or anything else that relies on purchasing 'specialist' equipment. As cheap and simple and basic as possible, that's what I'm after!#

So, to try and figure out what exactly was necessary.

Well, the first thing is, the tube that projects up through the slot in the baseboard needs to be held absolutely vertical with no possibility of 'wobble'. It needs to be attached securely and firmly to something under the baseboard. As I don't have the necessary tools to work with metal, the obvious answer is a block of wood, with a hole drilled to the exact diameter of the tubing, allowing it to be held firmly and vertically. Then this block needs to be able to slide back and forth under the baseboard in a controlled manner - in some sort of metal or plastic channel attached to the underside of the baseboard in which the wooden block can run. It will also need stoppers/buffers at each end so it can only slide the required 2 or 3mm to throw the switch blades - this will stop any undue stresses being placed on the turnout itself.

Then the sliding block needs attaching to some sort of rod which will allow for manual operation from the front or back of the layout. I bought a coil of galvanised steel garden wire from B&Q along with one of those hollow net curtain wires. The steel wire runs nicely inside the net curtain wire, which can be attached to the underside of the baseboard using cable clips (the sort of thing you use to attach telephone cables to walls). At one end the wire will simply be bent 90 degrees and threaded through the end of the sliding wooden block, and at the other end it will protrude out of the baseboard edge.

This just leaves the question of (a) how to translate a movement of say a couple of centimetres at the baseboard edge to the 2 or 3mm required at the turnout itself and (b) how to 'lock' the whole thing one way or the other.

With regard to (a), by far the simplest solution to me seems to be to form a loop in the wire (without the constraints of the net curtain wire sheath at this point) which would act as a basic kind of spring. The wire is stiff enough that the loop would not diffuse the initial movement entirely, but flexible enough to take up the excess movement, so allowing a 2cm movement at one end to be translated to 2 or 3mm at the other, with the stress being taken up entirely by the loop in the wire - the stoppers/buffers on the sliding block mechanism ensuring that it and the turnout above don't take any unnecessary strain.

With regard to (b), I have yet to come up with a solution, but again - I'm looking for the least complex one!!

Polarity switching will be achieved by means of simple connectors engaging with the wire or sliding block (again, not entirely sure how but as simple and non-technical as possible!).

I know that to the engineers out there this will all sound so ridiculously Heath Robinson-ish (whoever Heath Robinson is) that I'll probably be laughed out of town, but so be it! I'm not an engineer and honestly don't care what the stuff under the baseboard looks like, as long as it works, is reliable, and is quick, easy and cheap to make. If I had to make it out of Lego to achieve those aims I'd have no shame in doing so!!

Anyway, let's see if I can actually have anything to show for all this in a reasonable timescale.... Set your reminders for 2015!!!!

2010-08-05T13:48:00.000+01:00

Sorry there hasn't been much activity on here recently - my spare time of late has been all but taken up with various DIY jobs around the house and garden that I've been putting off for too long. On top of that, we just swapped round our 2-year-old daughter's bedroom with what was previously the office/railway room - a job that required some juggling of furniture in confined spaces! The layout was covered with a bin liner and taped all round to keep the dust out and remains in that state at the moment, now situated in the new, much smaller office/railway room which is awaiting a repaint, new shelving, etc. So I doubt much will happen on the modelling front until that gets sorted out, which could be a while.

Coal screens

2010-05-01T15:34:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago I did this quick sketch to illustrate what I tried to describe in my last post. It shows the screens and wagonway at the left hand end of the layout. It's not intended as a work of art (clearly!) but hopefully gives a rough impression of what I have in mind, although it's still highly conceptual in terms of details.

Developments

2010-03-22T22:23:00.000Z

Just over a year ago (is it really that long?!) I posted a couple of rough sketches showing some ideas for the layout. Since then I have managed to get all the track laid, but that's about it. Despite the painfully slow progress, on the positive side it has allowed for my ideas to develop and evolve a little more.

Since I originally came up with the track plan, one of the difficulties was trying to decide on a 'back story' for the layout that would tie things together and define it a little more. (I suppose I should have got that sorted before the track plan but there we go!)

Around the same time I was inspired by some photos of the Melingriffith Tinplate Works but I didn't want to go down the route of modelling a private industrial complex as such. Then I suggested the idea of a branch line that had lost its passenger service, with the sidings at the front perhaps being part of a goods yard with the old station just 'off scene'. However, this was all rather vague and I still felt something wasn't quite right about it.

(You might ask whether its entirely necessary to have a cohesive back story for such a diminutive layout, but its important to me - maybe even more so given the layout's small size, as it helps to set the small part you actually see within a wider imagined setting and context.)

Recently, through reading a number of books, I have been greatly inspired by the railways of the Forest of Dean and this has proved a huge inspiration in thinking about the layout.

I'm now pretty firmly decided that it should be set within the Forest of Dean during the late 1950s/early 60s. The single through-line would be one of the branches (such as the Coleford or Lydbrook branches - although I'm happy for these sort of specifics to remain vague) that ran off the main line through the forest, serving various collieries, stone works and the like. The line diverging from the loop siding at the back will be a secondary branch or long siding leading to one such facility some distance 'off stage', and the sidings at the front (for which I've had most difficulty coming up with a convincing purpose in the past) will serve loading screens for a closer to hand (though still off stage) colliery.

The screens themselves will be of fairly simple, corrugated iron construction and relatively low profile as some at the smaller collieries were (suitably rusty and dilapidated of course for the era and atmosphere I want to portray). The sidings, which currently end a few inches short of the baseboard edge, will be extended up to the very edge, with the screens (in reality built in half relief) covering the last 4 or 5 inches. (A 'proscenium arch' type arrangement will eventually help to hide the front edges at either side and create the impression of the scene continuing to the left and right.)

Running down from the back of the layout (where it will emerge from the trees) and into the top of the screens will be a trestle-supported rope-worked tubway (which could be made operational) to carry the coal from the pithead (off stage through the trees at the rear) to the screens. This, along with the screens themselves, and suitably placed small trees and scrubby undergrowth, will help to hide/disguise the 'holes in the sky' where the tracks exit to the left.

The right hand end of the layout will remain as I have always imagined it, with a bridge carrying a minor forest road across the railway and disguising the exit at that end. At the back the road will bend round and be hidden by trees and at the front the proscenium arch (and more trees) will hide it. The ground will rise up steeply all along the back of the layout with trees and bushes disguising the join with the backscene.

I know a picture would be better, but I haven't got round to it yet, so these words will have to suffice for now!

Encouragement for slow modellers!

2010-01-24T20:48:00.000Z

For anyone who, like me, is concerned at the rate of their modelling progress - take a look at Martin Goodall, who gives us an update on his 'Burford Branch' layout in the latest issue of MRJ (196). The layout was conceived in 1974, work started in 1981... and it still isn't finished!

OK, so his layout is slightly larger than my eight square feet, but nonetheless I feel encouraged to know there are others for whom progress is similarly slow! One comment in particular resonates with me: "I suppose that, when it comes to the point, I have never felt there was any urgency in completing this layout; the design concept and the process of its gradual realisation are more important to me than the finished product."

Despite this I wouldn't really like to think I'll still be building this particular layout in 20 years from now... but I do think its quite possible that if I do complete this one and move on to another it might well be a reworking of the same concept, just on a slightly larger scale. The amount of time that has gone into (and is still going into) establishing a complete and convincing mental picture of how I want the finished layout to look, means that it is already beginning to take on a life of its own, despite in real terms still only being track on a bare baseboard.

2010-01-24T12:23:00.004Z

After further checks this morning I think the discrepancy in the angle of the crossing vee is small enough to get away with, once the wing and vee rails are in their correct positions. As you can see from the photo, I used pins to hold the rails in their correct positions and then sighted along the approach rails from either end, as well as checking with the track gauges to ensure the stock rails wouldn't be pushed out of alignment, and it all looks ok. Phew!

Remedial work

2010-01-24T01:51:00.000Z

Buoyed by my success with the tiebars the other day, I decided to have a crack at rebuilding one of the common crossings on the layout. I'd been in two minds about tackling it for some time but had kept procrastinating. The problem was that I'd used thin metal strip rather than copperclad strip to connect the vee and wing rails, so the crossing had required some additional packing to bring it up to the correct height. However, I'd rather overdone the packing so there was a bit of a hump in the centre of the crossing. At the time I'd thought it 'would do' as it wasn't immediately obvious on looking at it, but as usually happens with such things, the more time passed the more I realised it really wasn't ideal at all and that the problem was quite evident when running stock over it.

I managed to extricate the offending crossing without damaging the surrounding track. Then, using the soldering iron, I removed the metal strips so the wing rails were detached from the vee. Then came problem number one. All my vees were soldered up using 188 degree solder and the only thing that stopped them coming apart when soldering up the rest of the crossing was by not dwelling too long with the iron. Well, you guessed it, in the course of unsoldering the crossing, the vee came unsoldered too! Darn! Lesson number one - silver solder your crossing vees so they don't come apart later!

Some time later I had reformed the vee to the correct angle (one of the EM Gauge Society crossing vee jigs would really have made this so much simpler, I just don't have any way of getting hold of one short of going to an EMGS show - unless any of you good readers happen to be an EMGS member and could get hold of one for me....?)

It was time to fix up the crossing again. Previously I'd done this by sticking a printout of the crossing template (from Templot) onto a piece of chipboard with double sided tape, stuck the connecting strips to the template using double-sided tape, tinned the strips, tinned the underside of the rails, then positioned the vee and wing rails using drawing pins to hold them in place before applying heat from the soldering iron to cause the tinned surfaces to join together.

There were two problems with this approach, although I'd sort of managed previously despite them. (1) Trying to push drawing pins into chipboard is pretty difficult and its even more difficult as a result to get the straight (coupled to the fact the large head means you can't see how straight they are very easily!). (2) Just relying on the tinned surfaces melting together to hold everything in place is a bit hit and miss.

So, this time around I replaced the chipboard with a cork floor tile (soft enough to make pushing pins in much easier but form enough to hold the pins in place), and replaced the drawing pins with quilters pins (the local craft shop had all sorts to choose from), these being much longer (although there is the risk of them bending, even when pushing into cork, if you're too rough with them) allowing for more pins to be used and with greater precision to hold the rails in place. Also, although I still tinned the copperclad strips, I used lots of flux and a blob of solder carried on the tip of the iron to make each joint - much better.

However, all this being said, I have to confess it still took me several hours to get the job done. Lesson number 2: always check, check and check again to make sure angles, measurements and alignments are exactly correct - one thing I keep on being made aware of though my own mistakes is the really small tolerances you have to work to in P4. There's a tendency to think "It'll do", but, as I've already said, this soon comes back to bite you! I had to take the crossing apart and start again several times because things weren't lined up quite right.

Even now, after placing the rebuilt crossing in situ, I realise that the angle of the vee is slightly too acute - it's only a fraction of a degree but enough to be obvious when sighting along the adjacent rails.... the question is is it enough to merit taking it all apart again, or can I get away with leaving it...???

Soldering for dummies!

2010-01-21T22:10:00.000Z

I had a crack at finishing the other Masokits tiebars the other day. I just needed to solder up the ones I made a while ago and then either make a couple more from the etches or try to salvage some from the duff lot (the ones I forgot to clean before soldering!!), which I managed to do.

I learned two big lessons:

1) Use flux!!! To anyone with any soldering experience this should be obvious but my lack of said experience meant that I spent a good fifteen minutes trying to solder up the wretched things without using any flux, naively thinking that the fact I had pre-tinned the copperclad, wrapped the etches around it and applied lots of heat from the soldering iron (with no additional solder on the tip either) would magically lead to it all soldering up nice and solid. WRONG! The solder melted, sure, but wouldn't 'stick' to the etch. After some time getting frustrated with this, I hit on the idea that some flux might help, and maybe a little blob of fresh solder on the end of the iron too. Well, what a revelation! A good slop of Carrs green label flux so the tiebar was practically swimming in it, and hiss... the moment the iron touched the metal, the whole thing soldered up beautifully, solder flowing nicely into all the joins and cracks. Lesson learned!

2) A bodged solder job can be rescued! I followed Flymo's advice, given after my last post about the tiebars, selected the ones that weren't hopeless, dipped them in some Carrs acidip to clean them up, then, with my new-found discovery of flux (see point 1!) proceeded to resolder them. Job done!

Didcot Engineman

2010-01-06T13:37:00.002Z

I recently bought the book 'Didcot Engineman' by Bernard Barlow (published by Wild Swan) and am about half way through reading it at the moment.

It's a fantastic read, and paints a very detailed picture of what it was like to do the job of an engineman on the GWR / WR during during the 40s, 50s and 60s.

I just finished reading the chapter 'Along the Branch' last night, which recounts in great detail one particular turn from Didcot to Winchester and back on the Didcot, Newbury & Southampton line. I almost felt I was there firing the locomotive with him, the account is so vivid!

Blue diesels on Flickr

2009-12-09T13:53:00.007Z

If I had to choose a different period to model other than GWR/BR(WR) steam it would be the blue diesel era. After all, this is what I remember from my early acquaintance with railways as a child.

53A Models' photostream on Flickr is a great source of inspiration and nostalgia if you're into that sort of thing.

MRJ 195

2009-12-08T23:01:00.002Z

I bought my copy of MRJ 195 yesterday and it's a stonkingly good issue. Guest editor Chris Pendlenton seems to have managed to revive something of the feel MRJ had in its early years. I don't know what it is exactly, but there's just a feeling of it all being a bit more hands-on, getting-stuck-in, practical, that used to characterize MRJ a bit more than it has of late. There's a strong theme of railway operation running through all the articles, which ties the whole issue together in a way that I can't remember seeing before to quite the same extent.

Two small things, which may be coincidental, but which get my approval are (1) the fact the the editorial 'standfirsts' (the bits in italics at the head of each article) seem to have been revived (under Tim Shackleton's editorship these seemed often to be one liners or done away with altogether) - I always think it gives a sense of cohesion and personality to the magazine as a whole when there is a little more to these seemingly insignificant lines. I realise this is down to editorial style so with the current run of guest editors this may be a one-off. And (2) a return to good old serif type for the most part. I may be a stick-in-the-mud, but I really don't like the sans-serif typeface that's been making its way more and more into MRJ recently. I imagine it's a bit of a design experiment, but I just think it looks wrong, particularly for a magazine that has always maintained a slightly traditional image (which, by the way, I think is a big selling point as it sets MRJ apart from the rest of the modelling press, as with the rest of Wild Swan's output).

Dave Bradwell's article is particularly good. I really like his 'just get on with it' approach, and by the looks of things it is paying dividends with his layout, which, for all its incompleteness, already captures the atmosphere of a real working railway amazingly well. As a minimalist modeller (by force of time and space constraints), reading his article gave me a bit of a longing to have a proper big model railway with long trains and lots of track! Oh well, one day maybe!! (Shame there isn't anyone I know of locally with a nice big finescale model railway I could get involved with.)

Oh... that photo of the station entrance on Chris Pendlenton's layout on page 295 is just incredible. No matter how long I stare at it I can't for the life of me find anything to convince my mind into believing it actually is a model I'm looking at! Incredible!

Masokitsm

2009-11-29T22:52:00.001Z

Grrrr... I have spent almost 6 hours of this weekend trying to make up four - yes, just a measly FOUR - Masokits tiebars! So far, seven have gone in the bin!

Yes, I've made these things before, but they don't get any easier the second, or third, or fourth time around. They are just SO fiddly!

Question to those more experienced than me - is this par for the course with this sort of thing, or does it indicate a particularly high level of cack-handedness?!?

(OK, I admit that four of the seven binned items would have been fine except for the fact that I totally forgot to clean the brass etches before I started that particular batch, so there was no chance of them soldering up properly! It may have had something to do with a certain alcoholic beverage being consumed at the time.....)

By the way, the 'm' at the end of this post's title is intentional!

GWR Journal Index

2009-11-28T20:02:00.002Z

Following the success of the Model Railway Journal Index, which was launched last year, I am delighted to be able to announce the launch of the Great Western Railway Journal Index at www.gwrjournal.com.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to John Palk, long-time member of the Great Western Society and Romsey model railway club, who contacted me several months ago offering to input the data for the index. This he has done with great efficiency, and while I am sure that there are still tweaks and improvements that can be made (as is always the case with these things), it is now at the point where I feel it's ready to be officially 'launched'.

The one thing I still need to look into is modifying the issue numbering system to allow for the 'Cornish special' which doesn't actually have a number, and as such is currently not included in the index.

The site works in exactly the same way as the MRJ Index, so should be completely intuitive to anyone who has used that (and in reality, to anyone who has used any Internet search engine).

I hope the site proves to be of use to all GWRJ readers.

The Forest of Dean Railway

2009-11-22T23:09:00.000Z

I purchased what looks to be a rather good book at Warley - "BR Steam in Dean - the photographs of Ben Ashworth" published by Lightmoor Press (a publisher I've not been all that familiar with until now). From the quick flip through I have had so far it features some of what are, to my eyes at least, the most atmospheric and evocative scenes of the closing years of steam on the Forest of Dean railways.

This once complex rail system serving the communities and industries of the Forest of Dean has only recently come to my attention as being a worthy subject for my modelling focus. Particularly in this period of decline it sums up the very essence of what, to me, makes the perfect subject for a model railway - ex-GWR steam, goods, rural industry, overgrown and decaying railway infrastructure, decrepit and worn out locomotives and rolling stock, and a kind out of the way, half forgotten sort of feeling.

In fact, it has pretty quickly demonstrated itself to be a perfect subject on which to settle for my current, albeit rather 'in limbo' micro-layout. It may well be that having a clear prototype focus like this may just be the spur into action I've needed.

(Oh, by the way, if you're interested in the book, I was told that the copy I bought was the very last one, meaning it is now officially out of print, although there may be a few still floating around in shops here and there!)

Warley

2009-11-22T22:17:00.001Z

Despite having felt a bit under the weather for the last few days I decided to head over to the Warley Model Railway Exhibition at the NEC today.

I last attended Warley three years ago, and as I commented at the time, was a little undecided about the experience as a whole.

Today?

Well, for one thing I felt there were a lot more 'normal' people around - maybe that has something to do with the Sunday exhibition demographic, maybe I've just grown older...!

The size of the event (it was held in Hall 5 this year, the largest of the NEC exhibition halls) while obviously a draw in certain respects, also has its downsides, chiefly the fact that you really can't hope to give as much attention to things as you'd like - unless I suppose you buy a two-day ticket. I was there for 4 or 5 hours but only really managed to pay fairly cursory attention to much of what was on offer. In retrospect, I always think it would have been nice to be able to linger a little longer at this layout or that demonstration or delve a little more deeply into what some of the traders had on offer.

Warley is obviously an 'all things to all men (and women)' sort of show, so the quality and appeal of the layouts and other exhibits, from my own point of view at least, is always going to be a bit variable. Call me narrow-minded (I fully accept it!), but I'll freely admit to merely a sideways glance at a fair few layouts and stands. However, a few layouts that did stand out for me were:

Askrigg Bank (4mm/00) - Absolutely stunning scenery, and what appeared to be a consistently high standard of modelling across the board. I wish I'd spent longer observing this one. The photos on the link don't really do it anything like the justice it deserves.

Worcester Road Diesel Depot (1:32) - A photo or two of this have recently appeared in MRJ. It's an amazingly realistic diorama (I suppose there is an unfair advantage of working to such a large scale though!) featuring the inside of a small diesel depot. It's a great idea for a small space, although I'm not sure it would work as well in 4mm given that the viewing 'window' would be pretty small although I have a feeling something like that (in 4mm) has been featured in MRJ in the past.

East Lodge (4mm/EM) - A really nice, well executed, GER layout (see photos at the end of this RMWeb post).

County Gate (009) - I've been impressed by the pictures on the website in the past, but it doesn't disappoint in real life! It's a large fictional representation of the Lynton & Barnstaple with some outstanding scenery.

I was looking forward to seeing Blea Moor, after the impressive photo feature in MRJ 194, but I have to confess I was somewhat disappointed when seeing it 'in the flesh'.

I'm sorry I don't have any photos to post but the lighting in the hall was pretty poor, unfortunately, and I couldn't seem to get the combination of flash, white balance and ISO right, so I gave up on trying to get any decent pictures pretty early on in the day. To be honest though, it's sometimes better just to enjoy the show without worrying about capturing it on camera!

Scenic inspiration from RMWeb

2009-09-08T22:39:00.003+01:00

I've been registered on RMWeb for some time but haven't really got on there much in the past. This evening I 'popped in' and stumbled over some really inspiring stuff.

First up, I found this picture of Andy Jones' 00 layout 'Summerborne' which I have to say has some of the most realistic looking model grass I have ever seen:

(more photos from the same thread here).

Andy has a really good photographic 'how to' showing how he achieved this effect using a combination of hanging basket liner, Woodland Scenics foliage, and static grass here, which I shall certainly be trying myself.

I spent a fascinating hour reading through the entire thread (all 17 pages of it!) seeing how the layout has evolved to this stage from fairly humble beginnings a year or so back.

I also came across another layout thread, 'Sparky's EM gauge 'Penhydd'. I haven't read the full thread (18 pages) but looking at the earliest photos and comparing them with the most recent ones the transformation is again pretty dramatic. I love the effect he's acheived with the grass-grown trackwork here:

and here:

(See the rest of this post here and the full thread here.)

What really stands out for me, in the case of both these layouts, is that you don't have to get everything looking perfect immediately - in fact looking at the early photos of both layouts you might not think much would come of them, but with lots of work, general tweaking and incremental improvements over time, things can really come together to look the business. What's also evident is the way that, particularly with scenics, you can just keep adding to it, adjusting it, playing around with it until it looks right, much more so than is possible with other areas.

I shall be visiting RMWeb rather more frequently from now on I think!

Switch blades

2009-09-06T14:23:00.000+01:00

I had quite a productive modelling session yesterday afternoon - at least by my current standards -getting the remaining four switch blades filed up and ready for installation.

Filing switch blades isn't a particularly difficult or even time consuming task, but does require a bit of care. By the time I got to the fourth blade it took me about 10 minutes to make. The process is nothing revolutionary, but for those who are unfamiliar with it, here's what's involved:

First the rail is cut to length, allowing for a small (0.5mm - 1mm) insulation gap at the heel and for the toe to be flush with the leading edge of the first slide-chaired timber. Depending on the curvature of the turnout, one switch blade will be marginally longer than the other, so it's important to remember which blade you are working on.

After cleaning up the rail ends with a file, the rail is clamped to the right hand edge of an offcut of veneered chipboard, leaving a couple of inches of rail free to work on and with the end of the rail flush to the front end of the board. Using a small flat needle file, a taper about 25mm in length is filed into the head of the rail only (taking great care to avoid the base of the rail). The taper should just cut into the web of the rail at the extreme end.

Then, using a small pair of pliers, a very slight bend is made in the rail at the end of the taper, so that the tapered edge lines up with the straight edge of the rail - a bit of eyeballing down the length of the rail is called for.

The rail is then turned over and clamped down again but with the protruding flare of the rail base slotted into the groove so it lies flat. A full-width taper is then filed into this side of the rail, the length determined by the angle of the turnout (for a standard 'C' turnout this equates to around 33mm - at least for the GWR type I model). The rail should taper to a fine point a the end, with just the base on one side protruding.

Finally, the end of the blade is rounded off slightly at the top, and cleaned up ready for installation.

2009-08-25T20:56:00.000+01:00

For those of you wondering where I've been for so long, I must apologise. On top of the ongoing demands of fatherhood, which has limited the amount of free time I have for active modelling over the past year already, I'm having a very busy and stressful time at work at the moment which leaves me quite honestly feeling like just collapsing in front of the TV most evenings!

The layout is still little more than a baseboard and some unfinished track. As an example of the rate of progress, I fixed down about a dozen chairs last night in the first piece of actual modelling for about 3 months! Unfortunately, even when I feel like doing some modelling, there isn't usually enough time to really get stuck in to anything.

While the actual modelling has been pretty stationery, I do still find time to dip into my ever expanding collection of railway books and magazines. A recent source of inspiration was Paul Clarke's 7mm Debenham featured in MRJ 112. A minimum-space 1950s depiction of a Mid-Suffolk Light Railway might-have-been, it is one of those layouts that manages to evoke a real sense of atmosphere and realism despite being small in size and simple in concept. The Martyn Welch influence is definitely in evidence.

As an aside, I do sometimes wonder if I'm really a 7mm modeller trapped inside a 4mm modeller's body - I think most of the models that really inspire me, with a few notable exceptions, are 7mm scale. Speaking of which, Iain Robinson, on his blog, had a piece about Chuck Doan, an American modeller working predominantly in the larger scales, that has produced some mind-blowingly realistic work - have a look at his site. Guaranteed inspiration!

Nice weathering!

2009-06-30T22:41:00.001+01:00

Class 45xx 4567. Swindon (scrap). 26 April 1964
Originally uploaded by ricsrailpics

Nice example of the sort of run-down look I'll be aiming for with my 45xx (but with numberplates).

GWR Steam Locomotives on Flickr

2009-06-30T21:44:00.000+01:00

I've set up a new Flickr group called "GWR Steam Locomotives" to collect together photos of, you guessed it, GWR steam locomotives! I thought this would come in useful as a resource, not only for myself, but other modellers (and of course anyone interested in the subject more generally).

There are currently somewhere in the region of 350 photos, ranging from old black & white photos from the 60s through to the present day and the preservation scene.

Check it out at http://www.flickr.com/groups/gwr-steam-locomotives/

You don't have to be signed up to Flickr or be a member of the group to view the photo pool (although you do need to have a Flickr account if you want to add photos, comments, or participate in discussions).

More permanent way

2009-06-17T22:11:00.001+01:00

Another 3 feet or so of trackwork have been completed between the weekend and this evening. The 45xx chassis has also gained brake blocks since I last posted and received its first coat of paint - or should that be grime? I'll post some pictures eventually, I promise! The Bachmann brake rigging is also being 'adjusted' to fit the wider chassis.

One thing I'm learning is that for me to actually make any progress at all, however slow, I need to plan ahead. Not just in terms of 'track needs finishing' etc. but breaking each job down into its smallest constituent parts and then tackling each of these one at a time as time permits. This way, even a spare half an hour is sufficient opportunity to complete a small task and is at least one small step towards completing a larger job. The more I am able to do this the more progress I think I will actually make as I will at least be doing something rather than just procrastinating, It's also more rewarding to work this way as each task, however small, once completed provides a sense of acheivement - which is important when on the face of it it's taken me longer than it takes some people to finish a whole layout just to get to the stage of a baseboard with a few feet of unfinished trackwork...!

New railway titles at The Works

2009-06-16T21:58:00.001+01:00

I picked up some great bargains from 'The Works' a couple of weeks ago:

'The Great Western at Swindon Works' Alan S.Peck. 278pp. Hardback. £8.99 (RRP £30)
'Around the Great Western Railway Then & Now' Laurence Walters. 256pp. Hardback. £8.99 (RRP £35)
'The Great Central from the Footplate' Robert Robotham & Frank Stratford. 112pp. Hardback £6.99 (RRP ??)

They are all published by Heathfield Railway Publications (HRP), which is an imprint of Ian Allan. I wonder if they're a new publisher as I haven't come across the name before and they appear to be re-releasing a number of old OPC titles, including the first book in the list above (which I've already got about a third of the way through and which is an absolutely fascinating historical - but extremely readable - account of the development of Swindon works).

They've also got another old OPC re-release which I didn't buy but I'm tempted to - 'An Illustrated History of British Railways' Workshops' by Edgar Larkin, I think also priced at £8.99 (RRP £30).

As well as the 'Then and now' book for the GWR they've also got the LNER, Midland and Southern ones in stock. I'm not usually all that bothered by these sort of books but the GWR one at least is quite fascinating - many of the the old photos depicting stations across the BR(WR) mainly during the 50s and 60s are previously unpublished, and there is something rather intriguing about seeing how these locations look 40 or 50 years on.

More 45xx progress

2009-05-15T14:21:00.000+01:00

The 45xx has been gradually progressing over the last week or so. The chassis now runs ok - simply tightening up the coupling rods sorted most of the issues!

The 'wheel arches' (what else do you call the spaces for the axles in a solid chassis block?!) required a bit of work with a round file to get all the wheels level and in full contact with the rails. Not sure if it was wonky out of the box or if it's something to do with the work I've done on the chassis.

(As an aside - while Bachmann clearly don't go as far as putting any form of proper compensation on their models, there is plenty of vertical 'slop' in the way the wheelsets locate into the chassis, meaning that you have a sort of poor man's compensation as I pointed out before - which I think is fine at least for relatively slow running speeds and well-laid track.)

The 're-purposed' Bachmann pickups seem to be fine. One silly thing that's puzzling me at the moment is how to reconnect the wires from the pickups to the motor so they are still easily detachable if I need to take everything apart again. Ideally I need very small terminal blocks but not sure if you can get them small enough or where from... anyone got any suggestions?

I've made a start adding the brakes (the original mouldings were removed from the Bachmann baseplate before it was cut up for use in the new baseplate - if I'd just left them on they would have stuck out too far). I cut small strips of plasticard (1mm X 1mm x 5mm) and glued these (using Loctite 'All Plastics' superglue) almost vertically onto the baseplate sides where the brakes were to be located, overhanging the bottom edge by about 2mm. These are to attach the brake mouldings to so they're positioned the correct distance from the chassis and line up with the wheels.

Glueing the brake mouldings onto these strips is quite fiddly as you need to do it with the wheels in place to get them properly lined up. I marked in pencil on the chassis sides where the tops of the brake mouldings should come up to just as a visual reference to try to get them all the same height (some sort of jig might help here). The glue goes off almost immediately the two pieces touch so you have to try and line them up a millimetre or so away and then press down - quite tricky when you're working with tweezers and trying to avoid getting the glue everywhere - especially on the wheels! Again, maybe some sort of jig would come in handy but I'm not sure exactly what.

Once these are all on I can start thinking about painting the chassis and then putting it all back together!

Getting it ALL right??

2009-05-06T14:46:00.001+01:00

I came across this in the FAQ on Jim McGeown's Connoisseur Models website last night:

Q: How do I achieve the crisp, square and beautiful solder joints with just a mere hint of solder showing that I see on the models built by the experts on the demonstration stands at shows?
Quick Answer: The experts don't achieve much better joints than you, they have just got good at cleaning up afterwards.

It struck me that this is true for all aspects of modelling, not just soldering. Yes, maybe there are modellers out there who manage to achieve a perfect finish first time on every aspect of their work, even the bits no-one ever gets to see, but I'll content myself with bodging my way through and just making sure that the visible bits are tidied up to a decent standard!

45xx progress

2009-05-04T22:07:00.001+01:00

I suppose one of the few benefits of a wet bank holiday is the extra modelling time it affords!

I made a new baseplate along the same lines as the previous one (as it had been hacked about a bit). I used the Bachmann pickups (I ordered a couple of the baseplates direct from Bachmann specifically for butchering). I cut the middle section out of each pickup strip (to prevent any interference with the centre axle) making two short strips for each side - one with a single wheel contact and one with two contacts. These were araldited into place with the wheel contacts protruding through the existing locating holes in the sideframe mouldings. I needed to electrically re-connect the two pickup strips on each side so, to avoid fouling the centre axle again, I drilled small holes adjacent to each section of pickup strip and then bent a length of thin copper wire so that the ends were flat on top of each piece of strip, passed down through the baseplate and ran along the underside, one wire on each side obviously. I should have said that before aralditing in place the top surface of each pickup strip was tinned with Carrs 188 degree solder paint; the ends of the copper wires were also tinned. Then the wires were soldered to the pickups using Carrs Speedy solder (with just a drop of flux). At the same time, thin sheathed wires were soldered on, to connect to the motor.

Once all this was done I temporarily fitted the gearbox and motor, connected the wires, and checked it all worked. Bingo! However, a couple of issues presented themselves. The middle wheelsets had too much vertical movement so that it was possible for the gearwheel on the axle to disengage with the gearbox. A couple of slivers of 0.5mm plasticard added to the top surface of the baseplate immediately under the centre axle quickly fixed this, still allowing sufficient movement (to act as a poor man's compensation) but ensuring the gears stayed interlocked. Also, and more mysterious, it wasn't actually moving! The chassis was remaining stationary while the centre wheels simply slipped, unless I applied some downward pressure in which case it did move, which suggests it was to do with the lack of weight from the body - although the unaltered Bachmann chassis ran perfectly well without the body...... hmmmmm, one to investigate further!

Anyway, putting that aside for another day, I did a bit of tidying up of my cosmetic sideframes using some Humbrol filler to get rid of a few gaps along the top edge and added some 'packing' along the bottom edges using strips of plasticard (which will be filed and sanded once fully hardended) to ensure there is as little gap as possible when the baseplate fitting is attached.

I'll get there eventually!!

Catch up

2009-04-26T21:37:00.001+01:00

I realise that this blog has been a bit quiet of late - sorry readers, so time for a bit of an update on what's been going on.

It was my birthday this week - a great opportunity (as if I ever needed an excuse!) to splash out on a few modelling-related items. I finally completed my Model Railway Journal collection, a long-held ambition, so I'm now the proud owner of all 190 issues spanning from 1984 to the present - a veritable goldmine of inspiration and information if ever there was one! Also, Part 1 of Geoff Kent's "The 4mm Wagon" (recently reprinted), and John Hayes' "The 4mm Coal Wagon" - both published by Wild Swan and excellent books by all accounts, which my initial flicking-through seems to confirm.

On the modelling front progress has been embarrassingly slow, as ever. The trackwork is still not complete, although it's getting there thanks to the occasional half hour of putting chairs on rails, soldering droppers, etc.

I got the 45xx (or bits of 45xx) out of its box again for the first time in months the other day, still unsure what to do about the pick-ups. Then a ridiculously simple and onbious solution occurred to me: cut the pick-up strips off the original baseplate and just re-attach them to the new baseplate I made. Problem solved. Why have I been trying to think of clever solutions all this time and missed the most obvious - and simple - solution?! So hopefully some real progress can be made on the motive power front at last. (And that might encourage me to get the track finished too!)

After the apparent success of my Model Railway Journal Index website (still keep meaning to write in to the magazine in the hope of spreading the word a little more widely among MRJ readers), I've been mulling a few ideas for a further modelling related website that might be of use (to me as much as anyone else). The idea that has been simmering for a while is a searchable directory of modelling components, tools, kits, parts, etc. with details of where each can be obtained from, and some sort of description/comparison of each. In essence, I see it working like this: if you needed to get hold of, for example, 4mm axleboxes for a P4 wagon conversion you were doing, and didn't know where to start looking, or what different options were available, you'd be able to go to the site, search for '4mm axleboxes', and see in one place a list of all the different types available and where to get them from, with a brief description of each, so you could make an informed decision about what to go for. It could possibly also include some sort of rating or review mechanism to provide user feedback on the pros and cons of each, although to work well this would depend on a large enough number of people actually using the site and submitting feedback. In fact, to even get up and running, the site would depend on users submitting information about what is actually available out there, as my own knowledge, even with the aid of MRJ's 'Small Suppliers Forum' and the donkey-work of trawling around websites etc, is fairly limited (hence the need for something like this). Anyway, it might all come to nothing but I thought I'd mention it in case anyone else thought it was a good (or a crazy) idea!

Still trying to decide whether or not to make the trip down to Aylesbury next month for Railex. The line-up of layouts looks amazing but it might be a bit of a struggle to make it that particular weekend which would be a shame...

The Welch Factor!

2009-04-19T21:15:00.000+01:00

Every now and then when I need a bit of inspiration there are a couple of issues of Model Railway Journal that I keep returning to: 40 and 106, which feature layouts by Martyn Welch -'Hursley' and 'Monks Eleigh'. These two layouts never cease to provide an instant and seemingly endless source of inspiration.

The last few days I've been poring again over the photos of 'Monks Eleigh', soaking up the atmosphere, examining the detail, just trying to inwardly digest what exactly it is (sheer artistic brilliance aside) that makes it such a great model.

It's a difficult job trying to come up with an answer to that one, because it all just all looks 'right'. It's far easier to point out flaws than analyse perfection! I guess a number of things contribute to this: careful observation of the prototype - right down to the way grass and weeds grow in uncared-for corners, to the way things are weathered. There's not an over-filling of the available space with unecessary clutter. The details tend to be in the stuff you could easily overlook like ivy climbing up a telegraph pole, or grass growing up through the cracks between paving slabs. Another thing that stands out is that it seems to work from every angle - the entire scene has been conceived and thought out rather than just plonked together in a hope-for-the-best manner.

I'm not a big fan of figures on layouts. Obviously it depends on your prototype as to whether you can get away without them, but I just feel that, especially in 4mm, its almost impossible to make them look anything close to lifelike. 'Monks Eleigh' is 7mm scale, but there are no figures in the photos at all, and it actually adds to the atmosphere. You feel as though it's a sleepy, quiet backwater of a place, on one of those baking hot summer afternoons (which don't happen very often but we all remember nostalgically from our childhood) when most people are indoors keeping cool. Open doors etc. suggest the presence of people close by without needing to actually have figures visible.

I'm also a great fan of the unkempt, slightly run-down feel apparent in this layout. I've never been particularly inspired by layouts depicting beautifully clean locomotives and rolling stock, buildings that look as if they've just been built the day before, neat ballast shoulders and gleaming rails, and manicured lawns running down to the lineside. I'm sure there was a time in most railways' history when everything was new and shiny, but that's not a period I'm terribly interested in. Give me overgrown, run down, dilapidated, neglected any day!!

I could wax lyrical for ages about all this but I'm sure most of you will have got bored and moved on to something else by now so I'll stop there.

Oh, just out of interest - I don't suppose anyone knows what Martyn Welch is up to these days? Its been 10 years since the last layout that we saw in MRJ...

Another quick sketch

2009-02-16T14:23:00.000Z

Ok, this really is just a very rough sketch I did on a piece of scrap paper, but based on the thoughts in my last post I think the idea portrayed here will work much better and be a lot easier to implement.

The building, which will sit fairly square to the back of the layout, will be modelled in "3/4 relief" (the ridge of the roof will be a couple of inches forward of the backscene with large trees disguising the actual join between building and backscene). The chimney will conveniently hide the backscene corner as a curved backscene wouldn't really work here.

The rear siding will run in front of the building, parallel to the running line, with a low, grassy bank and fence in between with the exit to the left hidden by a thicket of trees and bushes bwteen the siding and running line.

This will allow for a number of possible scenarios - the building itself doesn't have to give away the specific nature of the industry involved so various scenarios (and types of goods stock) could be envisaged. The rear siding could be treated either as a single siding to serve this one building, with just the occasional van being shunted in and out, or as connecting to a more extensive system of sidings and facilities beyond the modelled area, allowing for longer trains to run in and out. I like this flexibility as it allows scope for variation in rolling stock and operations.

Getting the 'back story' right

2009-02-14T17:08:00.001Z

As I said in a previous post, most of the layout is fairly clear in my mind's eye, but the back left hand corner has remained rather vague. The sketch I did a few weeks ago showed a few buildings angled towards the far corner with the rear siding disappearing into one of them. However, further reflection has made me realise there are a number of problems:

Angling the buildings like this would make it extremely tricky to disguise the join between them and the backscene unless I did something very clever with rooflines, chimneys, trees etc. Keeping the buildings parallel to the backscene would make life simpler.
It's all very well thinking I'll keep the nature of the industry open to conjecture and the buildings very generic, but in practise having a siding entering a building immediately begs the question of why it would do that and what goes on inside - and that in turn would dictate the appearance of said building and the type of vehicles going in and out. It would be a lot easier to keep the buildings generic if the siding simply disappeared behind them!
In order for it to be convincing (to me and anyone else who might be interested) I think there needs to be a clearly defined context for the railway and the surrounding buildings etc. - which means the idea of some sort of 'generic' industry doesn't really wash!
I've always intended that the railway should be part of the main network rather than a private system with its own locomotives etc. But up until now I haven't really considered the implications of this. There was usually a fairly clear divide with exchange sidings for transferring trains from one to the other. If I want to run 'main line' locos and stock on the layout then the idea of this being some kind of industrial rail complex goes out the window.

Taking all this into consideration, here's where I'm heading now with the 'back story':

What we have is a goods-only branch line, possibly closed to passengers at some earlier date but kept open for the various lineside industries it continues to serve. The scene depicted by the layout shows an area adjacent to one of the old stations (the platforms would probably be just the other side of the road bridge) with the end of the passing loop visible. The sidings at the front of the layout are part of the goods yard (there will probably be an overgrown loading dock alongside the front siding). The rear siding will serve a private, lineside industry of some sort.

Obviously this doesn't yet solve the problem of what exactly goes in the back left corner, how to disguise the backscene join, and how to disguise the exit 'off-stage'...

A hidden gem

2009-02-09T21:54:00.000Z

My latest acquisition of Model Railway Journal back issues has turned up a real gem in the form of Steve Sims' minimalist 7mm layout 'Bleadon' in issue 91. Based on a proposed (but never built) extension of the Weston-super-mare, Clevedon & Portishead Railway, the layout absolutely oozes with atmosphere in Martyn Welch's photos.

I wonder (as I often do when reading through back isues) if the layout still exists?

More Melingriffith photos

2009-02-01T21:14:00.011Z

After a little more searching, found some more photos of Melingriffith on the Whitchurch and Llandaff site:

Inspiration for industrial buildings

2009-02-01T20:59:00.005Z

The aspect of the layout I'm least clear about at the moment (and it's probably the most crucial aspect to be honest!) is the nature of the industry the railway serves and, consequently, the appearance of the associated buildings.

Part of the original inspiration for the layout was a photo in Railway Bylines of some overgrown sidings surrounded by trees at the Melingriffith Tinplate Works in Cardiff, with a rather work-weary 0-6-0ST shunting some vans (which I can't reproduce here for obvious copyright reasons).

The only photos I've managed to find showing any of the buildings at the works are these from the Whitchurch and Llandaff website:

However, while I do like the idea of relating the layout more closely to this particular location, I'm not sure whether these photos provide enough detail to model any of the buildings individually and even if they did, how they would be incorporated into the scene shown in the sketch I did.

Something to think about anyway.

Tips for soldering common crossings

2009-01-30T22:18:00.001Z

Here are a few tips for soldering common crossings (based on the standard procedure of soldering the vee and wing rails to thin brass strips):

- If making your own crossing vee, solder it together with a high-temperature solder
- Solder the rest of the crossing assembly together with a lower temperature solder
- Use a temperature controlled soldering iron and set the temperature of the iron for the type of solder used for each job to avoid desoldering the vee
- Cut the brass strips longer than they need to be and use heat-resistant tape to fix them to the template
- Use drawing pins to hold everything in place while soldering
- Slide an offcut of brass strip under the ends of the vee and wing rails to support them at the correct height while soldering
- Tin the top of the brass strips and undersides of the rails then sweat them together by applying the iron to rail and brass strip simultaneously close to the joint
- Ideally, solder the crossing vee to the brass strips first, then solder the wing rails, otherwise you won't be able to get the soldering iron close enough to the joint between the vee and brass strip and may end up with a weak joint
- Use a crossing flangeway gauge and check and re-check all the alignments after each joint is soldered.

Every complex project is really just a series of simple actions...

2009-01-18T11:39:00.001Z

Browsing through the latest issue of MRJ I came across Chris Pendleton's article on modifying the Bachmann 'Deltic' into a fully sprung P4 model. My initial reaction, as is often the case with these sort of articles, was to just skip over it thinking "It all looks far too complicated for mere mortals!"

But as I was forming up the various bits of rail etc this morning ready to solder up some common crossings it occurred to me that actually even the most complex of modelling projects to the most exacting of standards is really only a series of relatively simple steps put together.

Of course, some things are more technically challenging than others to do and do require practise, skill and patience. I'm not denying the expertise of great modellers! On the other hand however, the majority of us probably need reminding not to give up on something just because it looks complicated.

The challenge has often more to do with figuring out the required steps and the order in which they go together than actually doing it. Therefore, careful planning, experimentation and practise, proper use of tools, care, patience and a systematic, methodical approach are all essential.

I guess the same principle could be applied in many more areas of life than railway modelling!

My Library

2009-01-09T22:09:00.005Z

Although I imagine that for most people, reading through a list of someone else's book collection is only marginally more interesting than watching paint dry, I might hazard a guess that there are a few odd individuals out there who, like me, have a fascination with books, more specifically, books that link directly into my interest in railways, real and model, and in particular, old books - you know, the sort that you have to hunt through a cramped, untidy, overflowing second-hand bookshop (or eBay!) to find, that have that wonderful 'old book' smell, and that, generally speaking are so much more interesting, well designed and well bound than most modern books...

It might be worth pointing out that I've built this collection up in the time since I started writing this blog (about 3 years). The majority were purhcased second-hand, mainly from eBay and other online sources, and most are no longer in print. To those who may just be starting out in railway modelling, or who are taking it up again after a period of absence, I cannot recommend highly enough getting hold of and reading good books on high-quality modelling but especially on the prototype. Of course, my list is strongly biased towards my own particular areas of interest...

So here's my list:

Wild Swan Publications

An Approach to Building Finescale Track in 4mm. Iain Rice. (1991)
Great Western Branch Line Modelling Part 1 - Prototype Layouts, Track & Signalling. Stephen Williams. (1991)
Great Western Branch Line Modelling Part 2 - Prototype Buildings, Fittings & Traffic Operation. Stephen Williams. (1991)
Great Western Branch Line Modelling Part 2 - Creating a Model. Stephen Williams. (1993)
Building a Model Railway - Designing a Layout. Barry Norman. (1997)
The 4mm Wagon Part 2 - General Merchandise Vans, Special Purpose Vans and Tank Wagons. Geoff Kent. (1995)
The 4mm Wagon Part 3 - Conflats & Containers, Wagons for long loads & steel, Brake Vans and Finishing Touches. Geoff Kent. (2004)
An Approach to Model Railway Layout Design - Finescale in Small Spaces. Iain Rice. (1990)
Landscape Modelling. Barry Norman. (1986)
The Art of Weathering. Martyn Welch. (1993)
Architectural Modelling in 4mm Scale. Dave Rowe. (1983)
Cottage Modelling for Pendon. Chris Pilton. (1987)
Model Railway Journal Compendium 1. (1988)
Model Railway Journal Compendium 2. (1994)
Model Railway Journal Compendium 3. (1997)
The Golden Valley Railway. W.H.Smith. (1993)
Country Branch Line - An Intimate Portrait of the Watlington Branch - Part 1. Paul Karau & Chris Turner. (1998)
Country Branch Line - An Intimate Portrait of the Watlington Branch - Part 2. Paul Karau & Chris Turner. (1998)
The Talyllyn Railway. J.I.C.Boyd. (1988)
An Illustrated History of Great Western Railway Engine Sheds - London Division. Chris Hawkins & George Reeve. (1987)
Atlas of the Great Western Railway as at 1947 - Revised Edition. R.A.Cooke. (1997)

Oxford Publishing Company (OPC)

An Historical Survey of Selected Great Western Stations - Layouts and Ilustrations. R.H.Clarke. (1976)
An Historical Survey of Selected Great Western Stations - Layouts and Ilustrations, Volume 2. R.H.Clarke. (1979
An Historical Survey of Selected Great Western Stations - Layouts and Ilustrations, Volume 3. R.H.Clarke. (1981)
A Pictorial Record of Great Western Architecture. Adrian Vaughan. (1977)
An Historical Survey of Selected Southern Stations - Track Layouts and Illustrations. G.A.Pryer & G.J.Bowring. (1980)
A Pictorial Record of Great Western Engines - Combined Edition. J.H.Russell. (1975/78)
A Pictorial Record of Great Western Absorbed Engines. J.H.Russell. (1978)
British Railways Steam Locomotives 1948-1968. Hugh Longworth. (2005)
A Pictorial Record of Great Western Wagons. J.H.Russell. (1971)
Freight Wagons and Loads in Service on the Great Western Railway and British Rail, Western Region. J.H.Russell. (1981
Great Western Branch Line Termini - Combined Edition. Paul Karau. (1977/99)
Great Western Branch Lines 1955-1965. C.J.Gammell. (1975)
Scottish Branch Lines 1955-1965. C.J.Gammell. (1978)
The Thaxted Branch. Peter Paye (1984)
Branches & Byways - Sussex and Hampshire. John Vaughan. (2004)
The Somerset and Dorset - An English Cross Country Railway. Ivo Peters. (1974)
An Historical Survey of the Somerset & Dorset Railway - Track Layouts and Illustrations. C.W.Judge & C.R.Potts (1979)

David & Charles (D&C)

Great Western Coaches - 1890-1954. Michael Harris. (1966)
The GWR Stars, Castles & Kings - Part 1: 1906-1930. O.S.Nock (1967)
The GWR Stars, Castles & Kings - Part 2: 1930-1965. O.S.Nock. (1970)
Yesterday's Railways. Peter Herring. (2002)

Silver Link Publishing (SLP)

The Heart of the Great Western. Adrian Vaughan. (1994)
Signalman's Reflections - A personal celebration of semaphore signalling. Adrian Vaughan. (1990)
Station Master's Reflections - Images of Railway Life, 1954-64. David Holmes. (1992)

Other publishers

GWR Switch and Crossing Practise. David J. Smith. (Great Western Study Group, 2000)
Passenger Train Operation for the Railway Modeller. Bob Essery. (Ian Allan, 2005)
Branch Lines to Horsham. Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith (Middleton Press, 1982)
Burnham to Evercreech Junction. Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith (Middleton Press, 1989)
Railway Adventure. L.T.C.Rolt. (The Country Book Club, 1962)
Flexichas - A Way to Build Compensated Model Locomotive Chassis. Mike Sharman. (Oakwood Press, 1982)

Magazines (varying sized collections)

Model Railway Journal (Wild Swan)
Great Western Railway Journal (Wild Swan)
Scalefour News (Scalefour Society)
Backtrack (Pendragon Publications)
Steam Days (Redgauntlet Publications)
Steam World (Steam World Publishing)
British Railways Illustrated (Irwell Press)
Railway Bylines (Irwell Press)
British Railway Modelling (Warners Group Publications)

Society Manuals

EM Gauge Society Manual (EM Gauge Society)
Scalefour Digest (Scalefour Society)

Now, I'd better be going as it's been at least half and hour since I checked on eBay.....!

Inspiration from Inkerman Street

2009-01-05T22:21:00.001Z

Just been reading the feature on 'Inkerman Street' in the second Model Railway Journal Compendium. Superb photography and an incredibly atmospheric layout. It has always ranked as one of my favourites from the photos I've seen. It just oozes atmosphere. You can almost smell the sun-baked tarmac on the road outside the harware shop, hear the tinkle of the bell over the door in the bakers, the whirring of crickets in the long grass at the back of the builders yard, and the faint strains of a wireless drifting through the open back door of one of the terraced houses. This is modelling at its absolute best - it transports you to another place and time, like a really great novel - the kind you don't want to end.

I think Bob Barlow sums up perfectly what it is that makes such a great model - it's about far more than "a collection of carefully disposed miniatures"; its about personal memories, recollections, experiences. "apparently trivial thing(s) which act... as a trigger for a great deal more". These things come together in the mind to create a vivid sense of the atmosphere one is trying to convey and from there it is just a case of transferring that atmosphere into the model itself.

Although I'd be delighted if my models could even begin to come up to these sorts of standards, I think the principle (if it can be called such) is something I can relate to very well. I like to allow time for an idea to grow and develop and take on a life of its own in my imagination before starting out on any actual modelling. Not until I can see what I want to create in perfect detail - as if I've actually been there 'in the flesh' so to speak - do I want to actually start building it. I think the same rule could be applied to most any art form, be it writing a novel, painting a picture... it needs to take on a life of its own before anything is actually created.

On another note, I wonder if Inkerman Street (the model!) still exists somewhere?

Quick sketch of layout

2009-01-02T13:51:00.005Z

Just a quick sketch I did the other day to try to get a feel for what I have in mind. Certain areas are more definite in my mind's eye than others - the buildings themselves, apart from their general position and orientation, are less clear in my mind at the moment. The bridge (on the right) is not shown in this view, but that's one of the clearest features in my mind!

I've also not quite got the overall proportions quite right here - its wider than this in relation to the depth.

But nevertheless, it at least gives a rough idea of where I'm going.

I think I'll try to have the backscene curving round the corners rather than having sharp corners visible in the sky, although the left one could be tricky with the buildings. That chimney could help. I'll also need to do some clever stuff with the roofs to avoid the appearance of them just being chopped off where they meet the sky! Maybe there needs to be a taller building at the back - that way from normal viewing levels (by that I mean just above baseboard level) the roofs should be less of an issue?

Turnout timbering

2009-01-02T13:19:00.001Z

Unless you're a stickler for detail like me, it might seem pretty insignificant, but for ages I'd been unsure as to how to approach the spacing of sleepers immediately beyond the heel of a turnout where the plain track commences.

If you commence normal sleepering immediately beyond the rail joints you end up having to try and interlace the ends of the sleepers of the two diverging running lines and this was proving rather a headache, allowing enough space for the fishplates at the rail joint on one line and not too large a space between the last timber and the first sleeper on the other line.

Well, David J. Smith's "GWR Switch and Crossing Practise" (Great Western Study Group, 2000) finally came to the rescue! Apparently the GWR practise was for through timbering to continue beyond the end of the turnout (beyond the rail joints) until there was a gap of at least 3 feet between the rail faces of the closest rails of the two running lines.

This makes life a whole lot simpler in the track-laying department, because unless you're dealing with particularly long, shallow-angled turnouts, the need for interlaced sleepers is eliminated.

Unfortunately, I only discovered this after having already laid the front turnout on the layout, so I'll just have to invent some 'prototype' reason for the anomoly (or make the grass particularly long just here)! With the other two, I'd already printed out and stuck down the Templot track templates but some quick work with a pen and ruler resolved the issue and all the sleepering and timbering is now complete.

Follow Line To Nowhere on Twitter!

2008-12-27T21:19:00.002Z

For those already using it (and those who aren't but might be interested), you can now follow me on Twitter!

Actually, I already have another Twitter account which I post to fairly frequently on other topics but decided to set up a separate account for railway-related stuff to save boring the majority of my friends and work colleagues! Of course, whether anyone else with this line of interest is using Twitter is another question, but someone's got to be the first...!

I've set up a feed (using twitterfeed.com) which should automatically post the title of each new blog entry to my Twitter account with a link to the full blog entry. I expect I'll also use it for general railway-related banter as well, although that's partly dependant on whether anyone actually follows me! If no-one is following me after a bit then I might take the hint!!

Christmas goodies!

2008-12-27T21:05:00.003Z

Courtesy of eBay and some serious pre-yuletide bidding, Santa had a particularly delectable sack of goodies for me this Christmas...

About 30 back-issues of Model Railway Journal, taking my collection to about 150 - less than 40 to go till I have the full set now!
MRJ Compeniums 1 and 2 - already got no.3 so that's a wrap!
"An Illustrated History of Great Western Railway Engine Sheds - London Division" by Chris Hawkins & George Reeve (Wild Swan Publications, 1987) - 378 pages of the most fascinating photos, diagrams, track plans, architectural drawings, charts, tables and ephemera the Great Western devotee could ever dream of, not to mention an incredibly detailed and well researched historical account of the construction, development and day-to-day workings of 20 of the GW's London Division sheds, all up to the usual high quality standards you expect from Wild Swan! Instantly my favourite railway book!
"A Pictorial Record of Great Western Absorbed Engines" by J.H.Russell (Oxford Publishing Company, 1978) - to complement my copy of "A pictorial record of Great Western engines" (combined) by the same author. A fascinating record of all sorts of obscure and unusual pre-grouping locomotives assimilated into GW ownership.
"A Pictorial Record of Great Western Wagons" by J.H.Russell (Oxford Publishing Company, 1971) - more J.H.Russell to sit alongside my copy of "Freight wagons and loads in service on the Great Western Railway". Presumably about as interesting as watching paint dry to the non-railway person but totally absorbing to anyone with a fascination for railway history and rolling stock!
"The Golden Valley Railway" by W.H.Smith (Wild Swan Publications, 1993) - a delightful study of a quiet, rural railway backwater in Herefordshire and another Wild Swan classic.

I should have enough reading material there to keep me going till at least next Christmas!!! And that's not to mention the new camera tripod, which will no doubt require an outing to the Great Central Railway in the not too distant future - isn't the winter steam gala coming up soon?....

Coming up with prototypical reasons for short sidings!

2008-12-21T09:45:00.000Z

Looking at the front sidings in situ, they're awfully short! Fairly inevitable given the size of the layout as a whole of course, but it's got me wondering whether it might look less, well, "contrived", if instead of simply being plain old sidings terminating in buffer stops they disappeared into some sort of buildings / sheds at the end.

Trying to justify the existence, from a prototypical point of view, of two sidings that only hold 5 or 6 wagons, is difficult unless there is some specific reason for their being there and being as short as they are.

An alternative solution might be the crumbling remains of a loading dock, maybe with the old hand-operated crane still in situ.

Final final final plan!!

2008-12-07T14:58:00.001Z

The front sidings are now almost laid, believe it or not! (It's a good job I'm not trying to build Retford!!!!)

I've had a slight re-think on the rest of the track plan since the original design. The sketch above shows the revised plan as well as illustrating the other features that will make up the overall scene.

I think having the back siding and industrial buildings at an angle and the through line and loop on a slight curve will add a little more visual interest and hopefully create the impression of more space than if everything was parallel. The back siding will run into the buildings with the track then curving sharply to exit parallel to the back of the layout, allowing for longer trains than can actually be accommodated and possibly loading and unloading of wagons off-stage.

The exit of the through line to 'stage left' will be screened by a small building and some scrubby trees, while the 'stage right' exit will be disguised by an ivy-clad two-span brick road bridge carrying a narrow lane over the railway, the front and back of which will be hidden by a hedge and trees.

In front to the right there'll be the back of some allotments, seperated from the railway by an overgrown hedge. Opposite, at the back of the layout, there'll be an embankment, with steps descending to the trackside from the lane. Along the top of the embankment, disguising the backdrop, will be a thicket of trees.

Most of the track will be buried at least to sleeper height (and some to almost rail level) in modelling clay, weathered, and then liberally 'grassed'. (Some of my favourite railway pictures are of dilapidated railway backwaters, often freight-only or industrial lines, where the railway is gradually being 'reclaimed' by nature.)

Pick-ups (still!)

2008-11-21T13:58:00.000Z

Does anyone know where I can get hold of the right sort of material to make decent pickups?

The phosphor bronze strip I was intending to use proved to be too stiff and not springy enough, and ended up breaking after only a couple of adjustments!

The Bachmann pickups are obviously made of a decent material (copper I presume) and they're pretty springy and allow for quite a bit of adjustment without breaking. But where can I find a source copper strip of the right thickness etc? Can anyone help?

Sorry!

2008-11-07T14:50:00.002Z

Once again, my 'Blog This!' browser bookmarklet has proved that sometimes the very tools that are intended to increase efficiency can serve the opposite purpose. If you subscribe to my RSS feed, then depending on how frequently the RSS feed updates, you will have probably just got 2 posts intended for my other blog. I've moved them to their rightful place now. My apologies!

2008-11-04T20:09:00.002Z

I was planning on somehow re-using the original baseplate from the Bachmann chassis, but decided it would be simpler to just make a new one out of 1.5mm styrene. Here it is temporarily fixed in place with the original spring mouldings roughly placed in position but not fixed yet (they'll be attached to the baseplate so the whole assembly can be dismantled when required).

The next job is to make some new pick-ups for which purpose I've bought some phosphor bronze strip from Mainly Trains. These will be attached to the back of the baseplate (there's a gap between it and the bottom of the chassis thanks to the screw holes in the chassis block being raised, and extend through the existing gaps in the spring mouldings either side to make contact with the backs of the wheel rims.

45xx conversion progress

2008-11-02T14:52:00.004Z

Here a few photos of the Bachmann 45xx chassis with the new Ultrascale P4 wheels temporarily in place with the Bachmann coupling rods and motion. I've added plasticard overlays to bring the 'frames' out to something a little closer to prototypical dimensions as I just couldn't live with the scale 18" gap behind the wheels that there would be otherwise!

When I originally mentioned it I thought there was a problem with the crank pins on the front wheels fouling the motion brackets. What I hadn't realised at the time, which is pretty obvious now, is that the protruding ends of the crank pins require trimming once the rods and motion are in place. So there isn't a problem after all!

More photos when I've made a bit more progress.

And then there were two!

2008-11-02T14:46:00.002Z

More turnout pics

2008-11-02T14:39:00.002Z

Thought I'd upload a couple of pics of the turnout with check rails added...

Masokits tie bar

2008-11-01T17:27:00.005Z

I made one of the Masokits tie bars this afternoon. I managed to break one etching in the process (wiggling one of the tabs too much trying to get a good fold made it snap off!) and all things considered it was probably the most fiddly thing I've ever done (I can see why they're called 'Masokits' now!) but it was also extremely enjoyable (there's nothing better than being completely absorbed in making something) and the end result looks pretty neat (although the photos are cruel to say the least - the actual size is about half the size it appears in the thumbnails below!). Next job - installing it.

Whoops!

2008-10-31T09:38:00.003Z

If you subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog you might have just seen a post about the GCal Popup Firefox web browser extension. I meant to post it to my other, non-railway-related blog but didn't! I've moved it now but just thought I'd better explain!!

Masokits tiebars

2008-10-30T22:19:00.002Z

Masokits tiebars arrived in the post today. They look to be extremely neat etchings. I'll hopefully get around to putting one together at the weekend.

I've also got a wagon underframe to have a go at. It looks good!

Ian Hislop Goes off the Rails

2008-10-01T13:53:00.003+01:00

Ian Hislop's documentary on the Beeching axe is to be shown on BBC 4 tomorrow evening at 9pm. For those outside the UK it should be available on the BBC iPlayer.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7644630.stm

Magazine archive?

2008-09-28T19:21:00.002+01:00

I can't remember which forum it was on, but someone recently suggested that Wild Swan could make out-of-print issues of Model Railway Journal available as free PDF downloads. Now while it's a nice idea I'm not sure how likely it is at least in the near future - after all, Wild Swan don't even have an email address!

However, it has got me thinking. It really is about time that someone somewhere started making a digital archive of all the magazines out there, starting with the oldest issues. Obviously there are copyright issues involved which would need looking into with the respective copyright holders, and it's unlikely that publishers would agree to the most recent publications being made freely available, but how about back-issues from years ago? And what about titles like Model Railway Constructor that are no longer in circulation?

Quite often you'll read an article in the railway or modelling press that references an old issue of a long-out-of-print magazine. Not many people have the resources to amass large collections of back issues, but there is undoubtedly a huge archive of valuable information out there which, unless it is archived and made more readily available, will simply be forgotten.

Turnout construction

2008-09-27T17:53:00.005+01:00

Finally got round to doing some more work on the (first) turnout this afternoon. All that remains now is to install the wing rails, tiebars and operating mechanism, add cosmetic rail breaks and fishplates, and wire everything up.

My solitary P4 wagon glides through the turnout without the slightest bump or lurch, even without wing rails, so that's a good sign!

Each rail has two copper wires soldered to the underside which pass through holes in the timbers and baseboard. The soldered joints are concealed with cosmetic chairs making them completely invisible.

Wire

2008-08-19T21:59:00.002+01:00

I've been looking for somewhere that I can get hold of copper wire for making rail droppers and just come across www.wires.co.uk which seems to stock just about every gauge and every type of wire you could imagine!

MRJ Index site down

2008-08-18T15:37:00.002+01:00

Apologies if you've tried to access the MRJ Index site in the last couple of hours and wondered why all you can see is an error page. Blame the hosting company.... they decided to migrate my account onto a different server but didn't warn me beforehand, so now I've got to wait for the nameservers to update which could take up to 48 hours. Ggrrrrr!

Watlington

2008-08-15T21:52:00.003+01:00

I'm currently reading 'Country Branch Line', Paul Karau & Chris Turner's 2 volume history of the Watlington Branch, published by Wild Swan. It's an absolutely superb and highly detailed account of the line and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Working from the (roughly to scale) 1948 track plan in Paul Karau's earlier (and also excellent) book 'Great Western Branch Line Termini' (OPC), I've worked out how the terminus would scale into 4mm:

The grey grid lines represent 1ft spacings, with the red lines showing how the entire station area could be comfortably accommodated on 3 4'x2' baseboards without requiring any compression at all.

Definitely one to consider for the future. And having actually got into reading a detailed line history like this I am now beginning to understand the reason people choose to model a real location rather than something made up.

Common crossing

2008-08-10T19:11:00.002+01:00

My first scratch-built common crossing. (Well actually it's my second, but the first one ended up in the bin after some over-zealous 'adjustments' with the soldering iron!).

In the end I found the best instructions to follow were those on EM Gauge Society manual sheet 1.2.0 (4). The crossing is assembled as a unit, soldered to brass strips at the timber positions (these still require trimming on the photos).

Here's the completed assembly:

And here it is temporarily in situ:

Obviously we'll see how successful I have actually been once I've built the whole turnout and I can actually run some stock through it!

Turnout wiring - 3

2008-08-02T13:20:00.001+01:00

I'm just wondering... is the reason for the conventional 2 pieces of copperclad on adjacent timbers at the heel of the switches and 3 pieces at the crossing so that each rail can be soldered to a different piece of copperclad to avoid having to try and solder both/all the rails to the same small piece of copperclad??? Anyone?

Turnout wiring - 2

2008-08-01T22:38:00.003+01:00

Here's a revised (and clearer!) version of my turnout wiring diagram. I realised that only the frog/crossing itself need actually be switched, not the rails beyond the turnout.

The blue line represents the wire/rails that will be switched depending on the way the turnout is set. The brown colour represents the copper-clad strips: one piece connecting the rails of the crossing, and one connecting the switch/closure rail with the adjacent stock rail (no need for multiple copper-clad strips at each location is there?).

Insulated rail joints are shown in black - all other rail joints will be represented cosmeticly.

Rather than trying to pass the dropper wires up through the sleepers/copper-clad, solder on top and file flat (which I tried and found that filing the joint flat basically removes the joint!!), the wires will come up immediately adjacent to the timber/copper-clad and be bent over and soldered on top of the copper-clad where it protrudes slightly from beneath the rail. (This will be on the non-viewing side of the rail to hide it from view, and further disguised with the general dirt, grass and weeds that will encroach on much of the trackwork anyway).

Railex 2009

2008-07-27T16:43:00.003+01:00

Just seen an advance notice for Railex 2009 and it looks like it's definitely not one to miss. The confirmed line-up so far is...

7mm and similar scales and gauges
Beachley Dock (O Gauge) Walter Huijboom
Pempoul (1:50) Gordon & Maggie Gravett
Teign House Sidings (7mm Broad Gauge) Bob Harper

S Scale
Lydham Heath (S) Barry Norman

4mm & 3.5mm Scales and gauges
Amlwch (P4) David Clarke
Blea Moor (00) Peter Kirmond (last show of this layout)
Calcott Burtle (00) Chris Nevard
County Gate (009) John de Frayssinet.
Farringdon (P4) Stephen Williams
Ferring (P4) Michael Ball
Glendale (HO) Roger Nicholls
Liverpool Lime Street (EM) John Holden
Pulborough (P4) Terry Bendall
Saffron Street (P4) David Lane (last show of this layout)
Windrush (00) Harvey Whitmore

3mm Scale
West Harptree (12mm gauge) Mike Corp

2mm and N Scales
Wansbeck Road (2mm) Mick Simpson
Welton Down (2mm) Jim Allwood

Turnout wiring

2008-07-27T11:44:00.004+01:00

Electronics has never been my strong point, so I'm having to think this through carefully before I do it all wrong! I think the diagram below is correct...

The insulating gaps are represented by the double lines across the rails. The connections between the stock and switch rails will be copper-clad strip stuck to the top of the timbers (with the wire coming up at the side and soldered flat along the top behind the rail out of sight - I think this will work better than what I was trying before), and the connections between the various rails at the crossing will be thin brass strip soldered directly to the bottom of the rails before laying, with the wires soldered to the bottom of this.

I'm not 100% sure if I've got the wiring diagram correct or if there's a simpler way - my thinking is that when the main road is set, the red switch will be 'on' and the black switch 'off', and when the turnout road is set, the black switch will be 'on' and the red switch 'off' (to use complete layman's terms!).

If I've got any of this wrong, can someone please tell me!!!

Soldering woes

2008-07-26T18:18:00.002+01:00

The last few days, in between feeding and changing our 2 week old baby, I've been trying to make some progress with track laying on the layout. I've not got far - and not just because of the baby!

What has held me up is something I hadn't even given much thought to before - the electrical connections to the turnout. I've been trying to follow the instructions in one of the Scalefour Digest sheets (the one about turnout construction using C&L components). It says to cut small lengths of copper-clad strip and glue them to the 3 timbers beneath the crossing-V and also to the two timbers at the heels of the switches - between the switch and stock rails. Then it says to drill holes through the copper-clad, timbers and baseboard, pass a wire through each and solder it so it's flush to the top of the copper-clad; then lay the rails as normal and solder where they pass over the copper-clad strips to make the electrical connection.

Now, I've had all sorts of problems trying to follow this method:

Initially I glued the copper-clad strips to the timbers using 5-minute epoxy, but didn't account for the fact that the '5 minute' refers to when it's touch-dry, not when it's stuck solid, so as soon as I started drilling with the mini-drill, the copper-clad simply came loose.

Next I tried with super-glue and left it over night. However, when I tried to solder the dropper wires into the holes, the heat from the soldering iron melted the glue! Even disregarding this, using normal 188 wire solder and flux I ended up with a huge blob of solder on top of each piece of copper-clad, but no bond between the copper-clad and the wire (maybe because I had the top of the wire flush with the top of the copper-clad so the heat wasn't getting to it properly).

So I switched back to epoxy and left it to dry a bit longer. In the meantime I experimented with soldering wire into drilled copper-clad and found that solder paint is the best option to avoid the big blob. Also, it makes more sense to leave a bit of the wire sticking out above the top of the copper-clad while soldering, then snip and file flat. But once it's been filed flat there is so little solder that the join is pretty weak and I don't like the thought of a weak joint buried beneath the ballast etc.

Having put it aside for a while I've been thinking about it and started to wonder exactly why the copper-clad strips need to have dropper wires soldered to them anyway. Surely they are simply there to make the electrical connection between the rails. The power feed can be supplied direct to the rail at the toe of the turnout can't it?

Track laying commences!

2008-07-22T14:08:00.003+01:00

After 2 1/2 years of planning, blogging, baseboard building, house moves, and general procrastination, track laying finally began today!

This is the small, 4'x2' industrial layout I posted the plans for a couple of weeks ago. The photo shows the single baseboard (one of the ones I built some months ago, originally intended for the larger branch terminus layout which is now on hold) with Templot track templates stuck down onto the cork tile-covered surface.

I've stuck down the sleepers and turnout timbers on the front sidings. I've decided to stick with C&L plastic sleepers for this project.

Now, I really ought to think of a name for this layout...

Fairford Branch website

2008-07-18T14:17:00.003+01:00

While surfing the web just now I came across Martin Loader's website containing a wealth of photos and information about the GWR's Fairford branch. Worth a visit.

Developing a 'finescale' perspective

2008-07-08T13:32:00.002+01:00

My experience with the Ultrascale conversion over the last few days has highlighted a few things to me which I think sum up pretty well what 'finescale' modelling is all about.

My initial approach was to assume that it would be a simple half hour job - drop out the old wheels, drop in the new ones and Bob's your uncle! Well, maybe not quite, but nonetheless I thought it would be a pretty quick, simple task. As my blog post last Tuesday demonstrated, as soon as it became apparent that a little more effort - and thought - was involved, I became disillusioned, not only with the task at hand but the whole P4 lark.

But, with my initial reaction out of the way and having resolved to stick at it, I've quickly been rewarded with the discovery that a little more effort is actually very rewarding. I'm still in the process of doing the conversion, so I can't comment on the end results yet, but it's quite evident that my initial fear of having to do a little more work was unwarranted. What's more, far from just wanting to get the job out of the way as quick as possible, I've found myself actually thinking of additional things I could do along the way to improve the appearance, even if they require more 'surgery'.

the trouble is, I had approached the whole thing with a decidedly 'coarse scale' mindset. From that perspective, the thought of having to actually put knife to plastic was out of the question. I wanted the quick and easy route - no fuss, no mess, no effort required. Once I'd got over this and accepted the fact that I was going to have to be a bit more adventurous and actually get my hands dirty, it suddenly all seemed much more manageable.

I think the key is in the way you approach a modelling task. 'Finescale' modelling generally requires a willingness to work to a finer level of detail and an acceptance that it will require a greater investment of time and effort than might be the case with a 'coarser' scale approach. And that can be off-putting, even a bit scary at first. But once you've overcome that, it suddenly seems much less daunting. Exactly the same thing happened with my first hand-built turnout, or my first compensated wagon chassis.

Perhaps it's a good thing that there aren't necessarily step-by-step guides to everything you'll encounter in modelling. Sometimes it's actually the best thing to have to sit and figure out a problem and come up with your own solutions. You learn a lot more that way, and in fact it's actually a lot more fun too!

Model Railway Journal Index launched

2008-07-05T19:29:00.008+01:00

Although there are still about 60 issues to be indexed I've decided to launch the site anyway. The URL is www.modelrailwayjournal.com.

If you notice anything that doesn't work as it should, any mistakes, typos, or whatever, please let me know. With a project of this size there are bound to be a few rough edges at first.

I hope it proves to be as much use to others as it's already proving for me.

Not giving up!

2008-07-01T22:28:00.004+01:00

I've decided to soldier on with trying to convert the Bachmann chassis. Several reasons...

1) The Ultrascale conversion pack wheels (well, the axles and crank pins to be correct) are designed specifically for the RTR model so I'd have to buy new ones - not something I'm about to do given that I spent over £100 and waited almost a year for delivery of the four conversion packs I now have in my possession!

2) Converting the Bachmann chassis, even if it does involve some fairly major surgery, will challenge me to go beyond my modelling 'comfort zone' and improve my skills. After all, if I really want to progress beyond 'out-of-the-box' modelling into true 'finescale' then a bit of RTR butchery is a good stepping stone. And even if I make a complete bodge of it I will hopefully have learned something in the process!

3) My decision to 'go P4' was primarily based on a desire for accuracy of appearance, something which is still important to me. Even if it's possible to achieve a good looking model in '00', I know that I'd eventually get to the point where I wished I'd just gone that one step further.

4) I do tend to have these moments of panic occasionally, but in the vast majority of cases the situation is never actually as bad as I first think it is!

5) As I've said before, I believe strongly that the finescale 'ethos' needs to be pushed more through easy access to information, resources etc. I'm going to try and keep track of the steps I go through in the conversion and photograph things as I go along so that if and when I finish it I can post a step-by-step guide that might be of use to others.

So there you go, crisis of faith over... for now!

Is it worth the effort?

2008-07-01T20:06:00.003+01:00

Having nailed my colours to the mast of P4 adherence, I'm all of a sudden not so sure! Let me explain...

I finally decided to tackle the conversion of one of my Bachmann 55xx's using the Ultrascale 'conversion pack' I purchased while ago. I assumed that the most difficult part of the job would be dismantling and reassembling the chassis and coupling rods etc. Fat chance!!

Having dismantled the chassis and removed the 00 wheels it became obvious that there are several major problems:

1) The significantly wider back-to-back gauge of the P4 wheels leaves a ridiculously large gap (over a scale foot!) between the backs of the wheels and the 'frames' (or chassis block in this case). Platsicard overlays are an option except you'd have to try to recreate the spring mouldings really.

2) The brakes don't line up with the P4 wheel treads - in fact they line up with - and actually touch - the flanges. The only option is to cut off the brakes and then try somehow to reattach them at a wider spacing - sounds like a delicate undertaking with potential for breakage! Oh yes, and you'd have to construct new brake rods.

3) The motion brackets foul the crank pins on the front wheels, even without the motion and rods attached. Not sure if there's a simple solution here.

In other words, while it may not be a particularly long list, they are serious enough issues to make me think it might not be worth the effort. In fact I'm tempted to think that no-one actually tried out this particular 'conversion' before releasing the conversion pack!

So my options seem to be:

1) Spend a good few hours hacking away at the Bachmann chassis in the hope that it might eventually look and work ok, but no guarantees.

2) Invest in a Perseverance etched chassis kit - more expense and still a lot of work but at least it can be built to P4 in the first place and would hopefully work. Although I'm not sure if the wheels in the conversion pack would be compatible as they have spacers to fit the 00 chassis.

3) Go back to 00 gauge! (Not difficult since I haven't really built anything in P4 yet bar a couple of experimental wagon chassis').

To be honest I'm tempted by option 3 - especially after seeing how good Chris Nevard's latest 00 layout 'Catcott Burtle' looks... I'm not sure I've got the patience and commitment to pursue this P4 lark!

Hanging basket liner grass

2008-06-29T09:14:00.003+01:00

A few weeks ago I decided to experiment with using hanging basket liner to represent rough grass. While I think the results are reasonable - the colour in particular is quite convincing as is, there are a couple of things I'm not too happy with - one is that there are quite a few dark green wiry bits in amongst the fibres which don't look very good (I should probably 'shop around' a bit for other liners), and the other is the rather unrealistic way the fibres seem to go in every direction no matter how much you work at teasing them into a more convincing upwards direction - maybe this is just par for the course with this technique. I might try to get hold of some traditional carpet underlay and experiment with that (I think Green Scenes supply it in small pieces - or does anyone know of a cheaper source?).

BR crimson

2008-06-23T22:05:00.001+01:00

"Halfords 'British Leyland Carmine' ... is quite a good ringer for 1950's crimson (well, once weathered anyway!)" (Chris Nevard)

Painting brickwork

2008-06-23T20:48:00.006+01:00

A useful tip just picked up while reading Chris Nevard's website is to use ordinary DIY emulsion paint (B&Q 'pebble' is the colour Chris used on the crossing keepers cottage on Catcott Burtle), thinned down with water and a little washing up liquid, as a wash over the top of enamel-painted brickwork (and then gently wiped off the brick surfaces) to recreate the pointing. When I painted my goods yard office I used thinned down enamel paint over the brick colour and then wiped off with a thinners soaked rag, which caused a real headache in that it was very difficult to remove from the brick surfaces before it dried and without leaving small fibres from the rag stuck to the paintwork, leading to what I feel is a less than completely satisfactory appearance close-up - and it took a heck of a long time for such a small building! The obvious advantage of emulsion is of course that it can be removed relatively easily with water even when touch-dry (or completely dry if given a real good scrub!). Something to remember on the next building I do.

Another ideal use for emulsion is colouring exposed ground surfaces such as bare earth, around sidings, platform and road surfaces etc.

Making it a bit more interesting

2008-06-18T21:25:00.004+01:00

Maybe I was being a bit too minimalist with my previous plan. I was thinking about what I said about adding an extra track running from end to end allowing for a locomotive to run round its train before shunting the sidings, and decided that this would make quite a significant difference to the operational potential. Bringing the loop crossover into the modelled area would further increase the interest.

I've made some rough adjustments to the Templot plan above to show the idea, with the dotted lines at either end representing the tracks that extend 'off stage'.

Rough plan

2008-06-16T22:53:00.003+01:00

OK, here's the first draft - the track plan has been done in Templot, then a bit of colour added in Photoshop. The grid lines are every 3 inches. The whole diorama is just 4'x2'. The track enters from stage right under a brick-built overbridge (cliché yes but still the best form of scenic break, especially in such a small space). The 3 tracks would be fed from free-standing cassettes, positioned as required. The tracks fan out into 4 sidings - the rear siding passes into the works building itself. The siding in front of this passes between two buildings and off stage left. I might add an extra siding alongside this one, also running off stage left, so as to allow a loco to run around its train (making use of off-stage facilities at both ends in the process). The front two sidings would be quite overgrown - the tracks almost hidden in long grass. All around the perimeter of the yard there will be tall, mature trees, giving quite an enclosed, almost wooded feel (and providing an effective scenic break). There's possibly space for something at front right - maybe a small building and vehicle access?

The whole scene would be set up to give the impression of general neglect and disrepair while still being an active industrial facility (though in terminal decline). There would be various odds and ends of junk lying around in corners and between the tracks - rusting, rotting, crumbling away. Rolling stock would consist of open wagons (coal, possibly other raw materials - these would be loaded and unloaded off stage left, allowing full wagons to be drawn in and empties taken away later) and vans (goods outward, probably loaded inside the building itself). Motive power? Well, whatever is available really. Given that there need not be too many clues to location, this could be quite flexible, allowing me to indulge whatever takes my fancy - the theory being that the facility is served by the railway rather than being a privately operated affair.

Track and wheel standards will of course be P4, given that I have nailed my colours to the mast already! Mind you, I will have to try to recreate the appalling track conditions found in these sort of locations so that'll be interesting with the P4 wheels!

A new direction

2008-06-16T13:51:00.004+01:00

Over the past few months - as you've probably noticed if you're a regular reader - posts about modelling have tailed off rather. As I observed previously, a lot of this has been down to the development of the MRJ Index taking precedent, but it's also partly the realisation that my grand designs (ok, fairly modest designs) were just not going to happen in the near future because of a lack of the necessary space and time. My plans relied on converting our garage into a workshop/railway room, but this has had to go on the back burner. Also, the amount of time necessary to complete such a project would be fairly considerable. Consequently, I'd lost a bit of direction and drive.

So this past weekend I decided it was time to start investigating the possibility of something a lot smaller, in fact something small enough that it could live permanently on the worktop in our spare room. This would not preclude the other ideas from one day coming to fruition but would likely stand a better chance of getting built, at least in the short-to-medium term.

The scenic part of the layout (or maybe 'working diorama' would be a more suitable description) would need to fit on a single 4'x2' baseboard with simple detachable cassettes for 'off-stage' storage. The challenge, then, is to find a suitable concept/prototype that would work in such a small space, with enough potential scenically and operationally to satisfy me.

I have some interesting ideas brewing, but I'll save these for another post!

Screenshot of MRJ Index

2008-05-30T09:37:00.004+01:00

Here's a screenshot of my new MRJ Index as it looks at the moment, with a typical search listing displayed. There might be one or two tweaks to the visual interface yet but I though I'd post this here just to whet your appetites for what is to come!! Click on the image to see a larger version...

Motors, finding stuff and the web

2008-05-22T22:02:00.003+01:00

A thread on the P4Talk forum about Mashima motors has got me thinking again tonight about something that has been on my mind quite a bit of late. As a professional web designer I have no trouble whatsoever finding out just about anything I could ever need to know about any of the multitude of technologies that are spriging up daily in the online world simply by a quick search on Google. Blogs, forums, tutorials, live examples, video demonstrations abound. Just today at work I sifted through another 25 or so websites offering the latest in up-to-the-minute web-related information, deciding which RSS feeds to subscribe to and which to add to my de.licio.us account, in order to stay on top of the latest developments and have the most useful reference sources to hand. Most of these sites are well designed, attractive, easy to use, and packed with relevant and accessible information.

When it comes to railway modelling however, information is much harder to come by. Yes, there are one or two decent resources out there on the web I don't deny. However, the contrast is still pretty huge. I suppose one could argue that it's hardly surprising since many modellers are of the generation that tend not to use computers and the internet so much. Traditionally of course, the hobby has perpetuated itself through clubs and societies meeting in physical venues.

As a young (I like to think of myself that way anyway!) person in what I think is predominantly an older person's hobby these days, I find this situation quite frustrating. To go back to motors - this is still an area of relative mystery to me. Particularly as I read my way through my collection of Model Railway Journal back issues I regularly come across articles where components such as motors are references as if every reader will already know what is being talked about, but I don't. You might as well say "You'll need an R2D2 motor with a C3PO gearbox"! My instinctive reaction when seing a reference to something that I'm unfamiliar with is to open up the laptop and fire off a quick search on Google to see what comes up. In the world of web and computing its only a matter of minutes before everything you ever wanted to know is laid out before you. But this isn't quite so true of model railways!!

I don't know if I'm getting my point across very well. I suppose I'm trying to say several things all at once:

a) One of the biggest hurdles I've found to getting up and running with finescale modelling is knowing what's available and, once that's established, finding out sufficient information about it. Often products are mentioned, listed or referenced without any further supporting information (even many online retailers of model railway components provide little more than a product code and price. It's a rare treat to find a website that actually provides good quality close-up photographs, detailed descriptions, diagrams, or how-to guides.) Also, its very difficult to find out the full range of options available for any given product type. Motors for example - is there actually anywhere at all on the web where I can go and see in one glance all the different types of motors currently available for 4mm model locomotives, where I can buy them from, what applications they're suitable (and not suitable) for, how they differ from each other, what other parts they're compatible with, how to choose the best one for my current needs, etc. etc.??

b) Too much of the information that is available is aimed at those who already have a certain degree of existing knowledge. For example, the 'No. 1 Shop' series of articles back in the early issues of Model Railway Journal, while supposedly intended for the beginner in all things finescale, actually assumed a certain level of pre-existing knowledge about various things. Someone needs to write the book "Finescale Modelling for Dummies"! It can never do any harm to go over old ground time and again. If you never explain the basics then how is anyone new ever going to get started with it in the first place?!

c) I believe that railway modelling could do with a thoroughly good 'facelift' to drag it into the twenty-first century, and that in this so-called digital age, high quality, well designed websites with interesting, relevant, useful and informative content, particularly the kind of information I'm talking about here, could actually serve to give the hobby a much needed boost. Maybe the decline in the hobby is at least in part due to the inaccessibility caused by a failure to see how things look to the outsider.

Real Atmosphere

2008-05-18T17:57:00.003+01:00

For those of you who haven't already seen them, these videos appeared on YouTube recently. It's a half hour TV documentary from the 1960s narrated by John Betjeman. Just superb!

Welcome Scalefourers!

2008-05-02T19:49:00.003+01:00

It was a nice surprise to see Line To Nowhere getting a mention (well, a link at least) in the latest issue of Scalefour News which arrived on the doormat today! If you're here as a result of seeing it, then welcome! I'm afraid postings have been rather thin on the ground recently (see my previous post). However, please feel free to browse through the archives and read the story so far.

My P4 'credentials' are pretty limited I have to confess. In fact most of my 'modelling' so far has amounted to little more than planning, research, and a few 'experiments'. Several abortive efforts at starting construction of a small portable layout have already taken place but the lack of a proper space for it to live has prevented things coming to fruition for the moment.

Currently my efforts are focused, as I outlined in my last post, on developing an online searchable index for Model Railway Journal. A lot of late nights recently have seen some really good progress with this and I'm getting closer to a finished product. However, once the site itself is finished, there is still the time-consuming task of updating all the content.

As things get closer to completion I'll perhaps post a few 'teasers' such as screenshots just to whet your appetite. I think it's going to be a really invaluable resource so watch this space!

If you want to stay up to date with the latest posts on Line To Nowhere then why not subscribe to the RSS feed?

MRJ Index

2008-03-28T22:58:00.002Z

Sorry folks, I know its been a heck of a long time since I last did any blogging... a new job and a baby on the way have tended to mean that modelling, and writing about modelling, have taken a back seat recently. My short-term modelling goals have suddenly turned into rather longer-term goals as I've realised that there are bigger priotities in life right now than building a model railway!!!

However, one project that has been gathering momentum over recent weeks, is the development of a new, web-based database-driven searchable index for Model Railway Journal. This started out as a desire to index my own growing Model Railway Journal collection and rapidly turned into a plan to create a full-blown system! There are a couple of (partial) indexes available but not in anything like a properly searchable format. I wanted to apply my web development skills to the task and kill two birds with one stone - developing a system that I, and hopefully others in the modelling community, will find useful, while also sharpening up my own web development skills in the process.

As with most things that I put my hand to, what started out as an apparently simple idea has evolved into a major undertaking. Initially I transferred all the data from Mike's Index into a spreadsheet, added some additional fields (page numbers, brief description, etc.), and then began the slow process of updating everything including adding all the newer issues not included on the website. This is still very much a work in progress but will be made easier once the new site is ready, since it will include a full admin interface.

The system itself is well under way, with most of the work at present being to tighten up the code and generally satisfy my own perfectionist tendancies! There is no planned 'launch date' as such but I hope it will be within the next few months.

The perfect prototype... continued

2008-01-31T13:21:00.000Z

Just did some back-of-an-envelope calculations based on a Google maps aerial photo and in 4mm scale the entire station area would fit into an area no bigger than 2'6" x 11'6"!

The perfect prototype

2008-01-31T09:09:00.000Z

I've just discovered what must be the most perfect prototype for a small model railway ever to exist - Bodmin General. Having never visited the preserved Bodmin & Wenford Railway I've not had a chance to see this charming little station for myself, but the latest edition of the Great Western Railway Journal contains a fascinating article looking at the history of the line from Bodmin Road to Padstow, with a number of tantalising photographs.

It's the photographs and details of Bodmin General, the GWR's Bodmin terminus that caught my attention almost immediately. Here is a station that has it all: a branch line terminus on an extremely compact site with a road underbridge conveniently positioned at the station throat, a single road engine shed that was operational into the early 60s, a goods yard consisting of 2 sidings (opposite to and parallel with the station platform) and a small goods shed, a junction - within the confines of the station area itself - leading to the Southern Region operated line from Bodmin (North) to Wadebridge and Padstow, with trains from both regions using Bodmin General, and, to cap it all it still exists!

Given the similarities with the various layout plans I've come up with already, it's a tempting proposition to go all out and model Bodmin General to the letter, but I probably won't as I prefer the freedom to use my imagination a little bit more rather than being tied to an exact prototype. However, as a basis at least for a layout plan - particularly with the additional branch and combined workings - it's a very useful prototype to be able to refer to.

A modern photo of the station area can be found here: http://www.steampics.com/html/bwr040.html
This is taken from the road bridge at the throat of the station with the branch to Wadebridge leading off to the left. The goods shed has gone unfortunately as has the original engine shed (the new one can be seen on the left) but it gives an idea of the extremely compact nature of the site. I've not measured it up on a map, but I guess in 4mm the whole station would fit, with very little reduction in scale, into an area not much more than 12'x2'!

Static grass

2008-01-16T11:02:00.000Z

I recently discovered that the Heki static grass fibres recommended by Martyn Welch and Barry Norman (and which I mentioned in a post on here quite some time ago) have either been changed recently or else I'm seeing the colours differently... I bought quite a lot of bags of the 'spring' and 'winter' varieties with the aim of blending them into a summer grass coloured mixture but it turns out that they are already a rather lurid blend of vivid greens, dark reds, yellows and whites which to my eyes looks pretty awful and no better than those horrid train-set grass mats you can buy.

The recent article in MRJ about static grass recommends the use of Woodland Scenics static grass fibres in several colours so I promptly ordered a load of it. Fortunately this time I was luckier, as the WS fibres are a single colour rather than a blend like the Heki ones which means they can be mixed as required. The colours are also far more natural looking than the Heki ones.

I had a quick go at using the static grass and puffer bottle. I tried PVA, waiting until t was tacky before applying the fibres, but either I let it go too tacky, or something because once it had dried, most of the fibres came straight off! I went out and bought some Stikatak spay adhesive (usually used for flooring) as recommended by Martyn Welch in one of the earlier MRJ articles about static grass and this seems ideal, being immediately tacky when applied but drying to a non-sticky finish. It seems to hold the fibres very firmly. Also, being an aerosol, it can be easily applied onto existing fibres to allow subsequent applications to vary the colour or thickness of the grass. I've not tried Scenic Cement or matt medium yet.

Foreign inspiration

2008-01-16T10:44:00.000Z

I'm not an overly big fan of non-UK outline model railways - largely I guess because I don't have a great deal of experience of the prototype. However, occasionally something stands out which bucks the trend and there are a few that have caught my eye recently - not so much for the railway interest it has to be said but simply for the quality of modelling per se.

Gordon and Maggie Gravett are well-known names in the hobby but I've never seen any of their stuff apart from a couple of rather nice photos in a recent MRJ showing static grass on one of their layouts. I didn't attend the recent St.Albans show but maybe I should have, because they exhibited their most recent masterpiece, Pempoul, based on a French prototype. There is a thread on RMWeb with a number of excellent photos here.

Then today while surfing the web I stumbled across a small industrial layout by Lance Mindheim based on a prototype in modern day Miami. The subject matter doesn't really interest me too much but the scenic modelling is just superb. You can visit the website here. (Go to 'The Model Railroad' section and click on the links for the photos.)

Also, see my last blog post for a link to the Terrapin Narrow Gauge Society with their superb collection of super-realistic dioramas and small layouts.

All fantastic inspiration.

2008-01-07T21:21:00.000Z

Here's a site that's well worth visiting, with photos of some of the most realistic looking models and diaramas you're ever likely to see:

http://www.rbadesign.net/TERRAPIN/

Especially the 'Layouts & Dioramas' page.

Dioramas are not something I've really considered all that much to date, with most of my energy being focused towards planning a full working layout. OK, so I've talked about building 'test pieces' to try out various techniques etc. but why not take that one step further and actually create some 'proper' dioramas?

I don't honestly know how long it will be before I actually get a layout built. Part of me is starting to think that I should wait until I have more space available - perhaps if we can afford an extension sometime in the future, but that means I need to settle for a reasonably long period of modelling without a layout as such, certainly not anything of any size anyway.

And that might not be such a bad thing actually. It would allow for a much longer period of developing skills and techniques rather than trying to rush into something and ending up les than entirely happy with the end result.

I can still build up a stock of buildings, locomotives and rolling stock, and even various bits of scenery such as trees and other bits that can be used in dioramas but then 'transplanted' into a larger layout sometime in the future.